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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24879763">An Out-of-this-World Friendship</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex'>Silex</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bullying, F/F, High School, Minor Violence, Multi, Other, Rape/Non-con Elements, Revenge, Teenagers, Tentacle Rape, Tentacles, Xenophilia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 10:54:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>27,601</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24879763</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>High school was tough for Kimberly, no friends, no fun and not one but three bullies out to torment her at every possibly opportunity. This year was shaping up to be just as bad as the last, at least until she met Binchi, a visitor from another world. One with the absolute strangest ideas about most things, including how to best deal with her tormentors.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Violent Alien Symbiote &amp; Bullied Teen Girl it Bonded to/Trio of Female Bullies</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Nonconathon 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. A Bad Day gets Weird</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/HostisHumaniGeneris/gifts">HostisHumaniGeneris</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Lean over a little farther,” Emma suggested from the sidewalk, “You probably won’t fall into the mud if you’re careful.</p><p>“You could try to grab a stick,” Amber chimed in, “See if you can hook it closer.”</p><p>Tears stung Kimberly’s eyes as she tried to pull her backpack out of the drainage ditch at the bottom of the hill. Up above her tormentors continued to jeer.</p><p>“Yeah, you don’t want to miss out on math homework,” Tiffany snickered, “It’s not like you have anything better to do for the weekend.”</p><p>Kimberly tried to ignore them, holding onto a low hanging branch as she tried to hook the strap of her backpack with her foot.</p><p>The three of them had tormented her all last year and Kimberly had hoped that they’d forget her over the summer, or grow up enough to move on, but in the first week of school they’d picked up right back where they’d left off.</p><p>“Here!” Amber called out, “This’ll help!”</p><p>Kimberly yelped as something hit her in the back of the head, causing her to let go of the branch she’d been holding onto for balance. She teetered precariously on the thin line of grass along the edge of the ditch, waving her arms wildly as she struggled to keep her balance.</p><p>For a second, maybe longer, she thought she was actually going to make it, then another clump of dirt, larger than the first, hit her between the shoulders.</p><p>Time seemed to slow in a strange, almost exhilarating sensation as she fell forwards, the muddy water slowly drawing nearer to her, as though it was moving up rather than her plummeting down.</p><p>The instant her hands touched the surface, sending out sluggish ripples, the spell was broken and she found herself face down in the warm, murky water.</p><p>All she could hear over the ringing in her ears as the adrenaline wore off was the trio of bullies laughing down at her.</p><p>By the time she rolled over so that she was sitting in the mud rather than laying in it the three of them had run off.</p><p>She’d started the year with such high hopes, that it would be different and her second year of high school would be better than the first, but it didn’t seem that it was likely given the start of it.</p><p>Trying to wipe the mud from her face with her equally muddy hands, Kimberly took a deep breath and tried not to cry. It wasn’t fair, she’d never done anything to any of them, but right from the start they’d picked her out of all the other girls for tormenting, making sure that she didn’t have any friends, because everyone knew better than to cross Tiffany, popular as she was.</p><p>Kimberly shook her head, trying not to think about Tiffany, Amber or Emma. They had everything, there was no reason for them to pick on her, but they did. It wasn’t fair.</p><p>Hot tears ran down her face, drawing lines through the mud.</p><p>It just wasn’t fair.</p><p>The sound of something splashing near her made her look up.</p><p>Had the trio of bullies returned to laugh at her and throw more stuff at her?</p><p>No, no one was there, which she wasn’t sure was any better. At the start, after Amber had pulled her backpack off of her, and after a quick game of keep away with it, Tiffany had thrown it down the embankment, Kimberly hadn’t thought twice about running down to get it. Now, looking up, the embankment was steep and slippery and she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to climb back up on her own.</p><p>It really, really wasn’t fair.</p><p>Another splash as something rolled down the hill.</p><p>She tried to trace the movement, wondering what was going on, and saw, several feel up the embankment, an enormous white snake.</p><p>It had to be at least as long and big around as her arm.</p><p>She’d never seen anything like it before in her life, but it had to be venomous, because nothing harmless would ever look like that, with the rows of shiny black dots down its back and sides. Everything about it screamed ‘don’t touch me!’.</p><p>And it was coming closer.</p><p>Twisting and scrunching like a giant inchworm, it slithered awkwardly down the hill.</p><p>If it fell into the water next to her she didn’t know what she’d do.</p><p>Except that wasn’t true, she knew exactly what would happen, she’d scream and then it would probably bite her and she would die.</p><p>She hadn’t even realized that she’d been holding her breath until she let out a sigh of relief when it stopped at the edge of the muddy water and dipped its nose in. It was just taking a drink, that was all, if she kept absolutely still it would slither away and she could get her backpack and…</p><p>Try to get up the embankment.</p><p>The snake lifted its head, thick purple tongue hanging out, muddy water dripping from it.</p><p>She’d heard that animals could smell fear and that snakes smelled with their tongues. Had it smelled her when it had taken a drink and was now planning on biting her?</p><p>“I’m not afraid,” she whispered, trying to convince herself that she was telling the truth.</p><p>It wasn’t though, and the snake must have known, because it dipped its tongue back into the water, head pointed directly at her.</p><p>Great, just great, it was going to jump at her, bite her and then she was going to die in a muddy ditch.</p><p>As if high school wasn’t bad enough, she was going to die in the most humiliating way possible.</p><p>The worst part was only her three tormentors knew where she was, so there was no telling how long it would take anyone to find her.</p><p>It was quite possible that no one would ever find her, and thanks to those bullies, no one would even miss her either.</p><p>The snake lowered its head further, so the bottom of its head was in the mud, and swayed back and forth.</p><p>It was either getting ready to bite her, or trying to hypnotize her before biting her. She didn’t know enough about snakes to be sure which, but she was sure it would end with her being bitten.</p><p>Sliding smoothly into the muddy water it vanished from sight.</p><p>Ripples marked its path towards her, but when it reached an area of deeper water they stopped, leaving her with no idea where the snake was.</p><p>If she moved she was sure to get bitten, but if she stayed still she was stuck in the mud with a snake and would probably still get bitten.</p><p>The question was, how did she feel about that probably?</p><p>Something brushed against her hand and she flinched.</p><p>Even if it wasn’t the snake, it meant there was something else in the muddy water with her.</p><p>As soon as she had that thought she regretted it, because what else could there be in the mud?</p><p>Frogs, more snakes, fish, leeches?</p><p>All of those were awful things and, with how murky the water was. any or all of those things could be all around her right now and she’d never even know.</p><p>The snake’s blunt white head appeared inches from her hand and, unable to help herself, she jerked away.</p><p>A shrill buzzing sound rang through the air and the snake vanished.</p><p>Kimberly once again had to fight back tears, because of course there’d be bugs down in the ditch.</p><p>The snake reappeared a few feet away, near her backpack and slithered out of the water and onto it.</p><p>Well, that was the end of that. There was no way she’d be getting her backpack back now. It belonged to the snake.</p><p>Explaining to her mom and all her teachers what had happened to all her notebooks and textbooks wasn’t going to be fun.</p><p>The snake stuck its tongue out, almost like it was mocking her and she brought her hand up to splash it and wipe the smile off of its face, then thought better of it. Her goal was not to get bitten.</p><p>“Hello.”</p><p>Kimberly looked up at the sound of the voice, expecting to see someone standing at the top of the hill.</p><p>“Can you…” she’d been about to ask for help, but there was no one there.</p><p>“Can I what?” The voice, small, and quiet, asked.</p><p>It was odd, with how soft spoken whoever they were was, they couldn’t have been too far away.</p><p>Kimberly looked around, wondering if someone had somehow ended up down in the ditch with her. There was no one anywhere to be seen. If she’d only heard the voice once she would have dismissed it as her imagination, but twice? There had to be someone.</p><p>“Where are you?”</p><p>Were they hiding and trying to play another mean joke on her or something?</p><p>If they were it wasn’t funny.</p><p>“Right here.”</p><p>It definitely wasn’t funny.</p><p>“Where’s here?”</p><p>“Down here.”</p><p>She looked around again, but there was no one anywhere to be seen.</p><p>Just her and the snake, which was still on her backpack, head up, ready to strike.</p><p>“You are looking right at me. You do have eyes, right?”</p><p>It was the dumbest question imaginable, made even more so since she wasn’t looking at anyone.</p><p>Except the snake…</p><p>The snake…</p><p>No, that was impossible.</p><p>Snakes didn’t talk.</p><p>It tilted its head from side to side, the tip of its tail tapping back and forth opposite to the movements of its head.</p><p>“You’re…” she stared at the thing, not sure if she was more crazy for talking to a snake than she was for hearing voices when no one else was there.</p><p>“Binchi!”</p><p>The chirping noise had definitely come from the snake, but that didn’t mean anything. It was just a sound, not a real word after all.</p><p>Except it then let out a little twittering hiccup and wagged its tail like a dog, “You are…”</p><p>The thing matched her inflection almost perfectly, but she got the feeling that it wasn’t trying to mock her. If she had to guess, it had just introduced itself and wanted her to do the same.</p><p>“Kimberly,” she said nervously, now trying to decide if answering made her even crazier.</p><p>The snake immediately lowered its head, lying flat against her backpack, “Do you live here?”</p><p>“What?” She looked around again, trying to make sense of the question. She understood the words, it was a complete sentence, but what was that supposed to mean, unless…</p><p>Did it think that she lived in a drainage ditch at the bottom of a hill?</p><p>Well, it was a snake and they lived under rocks and stuff, so maybe to a snake a muddy ditch was a great place to live.</p><p>“No,” she said, not sure if she was more or less confused.</p><p>“Oh,” it sounded disappointed, if a snake could even sound anything in the first place.</p><p>“Why would you think I lived here?” she gestured at all the trees and water around them, as though it might have somehow missed that this wasn’t exactly anything that even remotely resembled a house.</p><p>“I understand,” it made a series of small popping noises, “Are you lost too?”</p><p>“No…” talking to the thing was giving her a headache, “I just got pushed down into this ditch. Once I get out I’m going home. I’m just…stuck.”</p><p>“Ah, I am stuck too. Not here,” it tapped its nose downwards, “But here.”</p><p>It made a sweeping gesture with its head.</p><p>Giving up on trying to decide if she was crazy or not she sighed, “I really don’t get what that’s supposed to mean. Are you from around here?”</p><p>“No,” it paused, thoughtfully, “Why, have you seen beings like me before?”</p><p>“Like a snake?” She wondered, because she had, not in person, but on TV and at the zoo once.</p><p>“Snake?” it tilted its head, “I look like a snake to you?”</p><p>“Umm, yeah? She stared at the thing, “What else would you look like?”</p><p>Though now that it had raised the question, it didn’t look that much like a snake, or at least not any snake she’d seen, not that she’d seen many snakes. It was too short and too fat, though she wasn’t going to say that, because she really didn’t want to insult the thing.</p><p>“I guess there is a resemblance,” it tilted its head back, looking at itself, “They do not have legs, do they? But really, that must be the only thing.”</p><p>Not having legs was a lot.</p><p>“So you have not seen anything like me,” it continued, “Then I am probably the only one of my kind on this world.”</p><p>It was definitely the only talking snake, but the way it had said ‘this world’ got her thinking.</p><p>“What are you exactly? Some kind of alien?” Because an alien, as crazy as that was, made way more sense than a talking snake and she was old enough to have long since stopped believing in magic. So the thing had to be an alien and she was the one who’d found it. If she knew who to tell about it she’d probably end up famous, but she didn’t think she’d be able to just go online and find the phone number for Area 51 and even if she found their number she’d probably just get laughed at if she called them to tell that she’d found an alien.</p><p>“No,” it let out a sort of whistling hiss, “Not exactly.”</p><p>“What are you then?” She leaned in to take a closer look at the creature, which, now that it was talking, was a lot less frightening.</p><p>It didn’t <em>really</em> look that much like a snake.</p><p>For one thing, it didn’t seem to have eyes, just those rows of black dots, and for another, it was kind of flattened along the bottom, like a giant slug. The impression of it being slug-like wasn’t helped by the fact that it seemed to have two pairs of nubby antenna in the corners of its mouth, just like a slug.</p><p>It did have scales though, small round bumps on its back, larger ones on its head and sides, and none at all on its belly, which was visible when it lifted its head.</p><p>So it was somewhere at the halfway point between snake and slug, which wasn’t a good place to be.</p><p>“I assume you are asking where I am from rather than details about myself,” it said, “I am from another world, arguably another planet, but it is complicated. You are aware that the universe is both infinite, but curved, correct?”</p><p>Kimberly nodded, not because she’d known that as a fact, but because it made sense. The universe had to be pretty big and there was no way to say that it didn’t have a shape. If could have been curved, square, or folded into a paper airplane for all she knew about it. Just because she didn’t have any friends didn’t mean that she spent all of her time doing school work and buried in books.</p><p>“The universe, by virtue of being infinite, curves and folds back on itself countless times, overlapping, but by the nature of infinity, never actually touching. The places that are closest due to folding rather than spatial distance tend to be similar, but not the same. The place I come from is a world that occupies exactly the same place as your world, so that a number of things are conserved such as ratios of elements, the amino acids necessary for life, and certain aspects of genetic structure. Our planets are fundamentally the same place with a number of small, cumulative differences which create two worlds that appear vastly different, but are the same in most ways that count. That is why I am able to survive here and why travel is relatively easy with the correct technology.</p><p>That sort of explained things, some things at least, because she couldn’t wrap her head around the idea of things being in the exact same place, but separate, and it saying that their worlds were the same in a lot of ways left a lot of questions.</p><p>“How come you’re a talking snake, rather than a little green or gray man then?” Because that was how aliens were always depicted, guys with funky colored skin and weird eyes or ears. If what it had said was true that would have at least explained the depiction, some sort of weird effect from the overlap, especially if their worlds were really that similar.</p><p>The creature lifted its front half as high as it could, “If you were born on the exact opposite side of the planet, not just you, but your family, going back as many generations as you have history, would you look and act exactly the same?”</p><p>It had a point there, she had no idea what country was on the exact opposite of the world, but whatever one it was, they were bound to do things differently. That still left a very important question unanswered though, possibly the most important question, “How come you can speak English?”</p><p>Because until it brought up other countries she hadn’t even considered how strange it was that the creature spoke the same language. It would have had to learn, which meant that it had been doing research. Was she here watching the start of an alien invasion?</p><p>“The pop culture of your world is so fascinating. I have…” it paused, sticking out its tongue and curling it in what she figured was a sort of alien facial expression considering it didn’t have much in the way of a face, “An interest in…your animated entertainment and the translations are…lacking. Much of the original nuance is lost, especially in series such as <em>She-Ra and the Princess of Power</em> and <em>The Dragon Prince</em>. I learned your language to be able to watch them as they were meant to be.”</p><p>So she’d found a not-quite-alien who was also a huge nerd. She wasn’t sure what to make of that except that it lined up way too well with the kind of luck she always had.</p><p>There was one more question about its talking that had just occurred to her, one that was really creepy and that needed an answer, “You’re not psychic, right, talking directly into my brain?”</p><p>Because she hadn’t seen its mouth move except for the times it stuck out its tongue and the last thing she needed was alien brainwaves in her head. Who knew what they’d do to her?</p><p>“No,” it made a hiccupping noise, “Why would you think such a thing?”</p><p>“Because your mouth doesn’t move when you talk,” she sighed, trying to figure out if it was joking, or if it really was psychic and had read her thoughts and was trying to reassure her that it wasn’t looking into her head at that very moment, poking around and watching all her most embarrassing memories, like just last year when she’d had her shirt on inside out all day and never noticed until she got home. Or the time at her tenth birthday party when…</p><p>The creature let out a soft buzzing noise, “What does a mouth have to do with talking?”</p><p>“Umm, everything?” Kimberly stared at the thing.</p><p>“But mouths are for eating,” it said flatly, as though stating something obvious.</p><p>Then again, that was pretty obvious.</p><p>“Yeah, but that’s also how you talk.”</p><p>“Is that how you talk?” It wondered, “Because that sounds messy. How do you talk when you’re eating?”</p><p>“We don’t. That’s a really rude thing to do,” Kimberly said. Meeting an alien was kind of disappointing given how little the creature seemed to know. Weren’t they supposed to be smart? “And if you don’t use your mouth how are you even talking?”</p><p>It tilted its head down and forwards, revealing two spots that she’d assumed were where its ears were. They twitched when it answered, “Spiracles.”</p><p>Okay, that was strange, really, really strange. She wasn’t sure how she felt about something that talked through holes where its ears should be. Which then raised the question of how it could hear her.</p><p>She considered asking, but decided that she didn’t need to know where the things ears were when there were so many more important questions.</p><p>“Could you get off my backpack so I can grab it and go home?” Because as interesting as it was to meet a not-exactly-alien, she didn’t want to spend the rest of the day sitting in the mud, talking to what was pretty much a snake. Yeah, it was a talking snake, but it was still a snake and she was still sitting in the mud with it.</p><p>“Of course,” it slid off her backpack and into the mud, half slithering, half swimming until it reached a patch of grass. There, after turning in circles to clean itself off, it asked a question of its own, “Can I go home with you?”</p><p>“Umm…” she looked around at the ditch. Yeah, she wouldn’t have wanted to stay there if she’d been given the choice, “Sure.”</p><p>“Oh thank you!” Its gratitude sounded genuine, if she was able to read anything into its weird, whistling voice, “Though there is an abundance of food here, it is not a comfortable place to spend the night. And it is very boring.”</p><p>Which was how she ended up carrying an alien-snake-thing home in her backpack.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Setting the Ground Rules</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kimberly managed to make it home before her mom got home from work, which was a good thing. She really didn’t want to explain why she was covered in mud, because that would mean explaining Tiffany, Emma and Amber to her mom. The last thing she needed was for her mom to decide to get involved and call the school or something like that, because if anyone found out about that she’d never be allowed to live it down.</p><p>It also saved her from having to explain how she’d found an alien on the way home, an alien that, from conversation on the walk home, she had learned was named Binchi and little else of importance about.</p><p>Actually, as crazy as it must have been for both of them, they’d had surprisingly little to talk about, largely because she wasn’t interested in cartoons and didn’t know what else to talk to Binchi about. It was an alien after all, so it wasn’t like they had much in common.</p><p>Except apparently being socially awkward, which figured. Meeting an alien and discovering that it was as bad at conversation as she was matched the kind of luck she always had.</p><p>It was annoying too, because it felt like there should have been a lot for them to talk about, it was just that every attempt when in a weird direction.</p><p>Like when they walked past a yard with a yappy little dog in it and Binchi had asked her if it was so little because it had just molted.</p><p>That led to a long, awkward explanation, because Binchi had somehow gotten the idea that cats were the juvenile form of dogs and seemed genuinely surprised to learn that they weren’t and that dogs didn’t grow larger by molting. Aliens were supposed to be smart, with advanced technology, and they must have been to create the technology for Binchi to have ended up on earth, but listening to its genuine amazement as she explained how cats and dogs worked didn’t make him sound smart.</p><p>It was like talking to a weird little kid.</p><p>A weird little kid she was carrying around in her backpack.</p><p>Once they got to her house she had Binchi get out of her backpack so she could salvage what books she could before throwing it out in the neighbor’s garbage can. That way, if her mom asked her about the backpack she could just lie and say it broke while she was in school so she threw it out. Her mom didn’t need to know about the bullies she had to deal with.</p><p>While she was sorting through her books on the front porch, because there was no point in bringing the ones too soggy to save inside when they were just going to go into the neighbor’s trash to join her backpack, Binchi slithered up her arm to sit on her shoulder, as though there was nothing weird about it.</p><p>That she needed to comment on, “What are you doing?”</p><p>“Sitting,” Binchi said flatly.</p><p>“On my shoulder,” Kimberly retorted, “Why?”</p><p>“You’re larger and move faster,” it replied, as though there was nothing strange about the situation.</p><p>“Do you sit on people’s shoulders back home?” She snapped and then rolled her eyes. Of course it didn’t, there were no people where it came from, just weird snakes. Which made Binchi’s reply all the more shocking.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>Holy shit, this was an invasion and not the first. Aliens were here to take people as slaves or pets or something, and Binchi had probably already chosen her. And she’d thought the year couldn’t have possibly gotten any worse.</p><p>Maybe she could convince him to take Tiffany or one of her friends instead. They were at least popular, so that would make them more desirable as pets, right?</p><p>There was no time like the present to address the issue, “Please don’t take me back to your planet.”</p><p>Binchi lay flat on her shoulder, “I cannot even get back there myself. You lack the technology and I doubt anyone important is looking for me yet.”</p><p>Of course, every answer she got from it raised more questions. The simplest thing to do was ignore it and not talk.</p><p>It had said that it sat on people’s shoulders though, so that meant that there were either people on its world, or a different species that it considered people. Because snakes didn’t have shoulders…</p><p>There was a lot to think about with Binchi and the more she had to think about the less she wanted to.</p><p>It if had been even remotely normal, she could have asked it about itself and hoped to learn more that way, but it wasn’t and she didn’t even know where to start.</p><p>After salvaging as many of her books as she could Kimberly went inside and trudged into the kitchen. She needed a shower desperately, but she was also hungry and there was a piece of chocolate cake left in the fridge and after the day she’d had she deserved that cake.</p><p>“What are you doing?” Binchi lifted its head and inhaled loudly, with its mouth open wide.</p><p>Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Binchi had teeth, lots and lots of little, sharp teeth. Rows of them like a shark and as far as Kimberly was concerned, sharks were wrong for having so many teeth. Seeing them that close to her face was terrifying, except Binchi wasn’t an animal, he was an alien and aliens didn’t bite people.</p><p>That thought immediately got her thinking of all the horror movies where aliens <em>did</em> bite people and a whole lot worse.</p><p>Aliens that talk don’t bite people, she amended, and let the thought drop before she could think of exceptions to that, because she was pretty sure there were. She just didn’t watch those kinds of movies, though maybe she should have. Then she might have had some idea of what was going on.</p><p>“I’m getting something to eat,” she said, taking the last piece of cake.</p><p>“Food would be appreciated,” Binchi said with a series of little popping noises.</p><p>She wasn’t sharing the cake with it and she also wasn’t cooking anything for it.</p><p>Kimberly was considering telling it that it would have to wait until dinner, but then thought about trying to introduce it her mom. One, Binchi was a snake, two, it was a snake that said weird things, she couldn’t think of a three, but given one and two, there wasn’t much of a need to. Bringing it to the dinner table wasn’t a good idea. Which meant that Binchi was going to have to wait until later and have leftovers.</p><p>She was ready to tell it as much while she was getting a fork out of the drawer, but Binchi slid off of her shoulder and onto the counter.</p><p>Binchi slithered over to the fruit basket on the other end of counter, “These are food, not decorative, correct?”</p><p>“Yeah, that’s food,” hearing that Binchi could eat fruit, which was what she assumed its interest in fruit meant, was such a relief, because there was no way in hell she was going to catch a live mouse for it to eat.</p><p>“Good. I was getting tired of meat and the plant life where I ended up was not easily digestible. These look far more palatable”</p><p>At which point she was treated to the wonderful and indescribable sight of watching, what was more or less, a snake eating a banana whole, peel and all.</p><p>It was a thing, and that was the most she was willing to give it.</p><p>When she finished the cake she put her arm on the counter so Binchi could slither up to her shoulder because leaving it in the kitchen for her mom to find was not something she was going to do.</p><p>“Where are we going now?” Binchi asked excitedly, “Your dwelling is fascinating in a primitive way. Storing food in the open, or in climate controlled boxes is such a quaint concept. And there are so many devices here that I cannot begin to imagine the function of.”</p><p>It was staring in the direction of the toaster as it said that.</p><p>Later, if it was still hungry, she’d show it how to make toast and jam and really blow its mind. Not having arms, a jar of jam would probably be unfathomable to it.</p><p>“I’m taking a shower,” she said.</p><p>“Shower,” Binchi said quietly, “Shower… I am sorry, I do not understand the word in that context. Or is that some saying that I do not understand?”</p><p>“It doesn’t matter,” Kimberly said quickly, “You’re waiting in my room.”</p><p>Thankfully Binchi didn’t question that and when she went back to her room to get dressed after her shower, it was asleep on a pile of dirty clothes on her floor.</p><p>She let it sleep while she went on Facebook and killed time until her mom got home.</p><p>Binchi didn’t wake up for that either, so she left it alone, figuring that there was only so much trouble it could get into without arms or legs. After all, it wasn’t like it could touch anything.</p><p>Confident in that thought, she went down and had a fairly normal meal with her mom, complete with uncomfortable conversation about how her day had been. Kimberly did what she always did, lying and making up stuff about friends and how she was going to hang out with them online after dinner. Her mom didn’t need to know that she had no friends and was tormented daily and that the two were connected. As long as she wasn’t bringing any boyfriends home her mom didn’t seem to care, which said a lot about how clueless parents were.</p><p>And thinking that Binchi couldn’t be trouble without arms said a lot about how clueless Kimberly could be.</p><p>When she got back to her room it was sitting on her laptop, literally sitting on it, using its tail to operate the mouse and weird little feeler-antenna-tentacle things to work the keys.</p><p>“Humans are so interesting,” Binchi said as she entered the room, “Your social dynamics are exactly as they appear on your animated entertainment. There appear to be fewer explosions, of course, but that is how it is with most entertainment, is it not?”</p><p>It was on Facebook, looking at the profiles of everyone who she’d friended, mostly relatives.</p><p>That actually made it even more embarrassing, given the kinds of pictures Aunt Martha liked to post, and the antics of her three cousins in Wisconsin.</p><p>“What are you doing?” She glared at Binchi, looking to see what it had been looking at. Hopefully nothing too terrible.</p><p>“Learning!” Binchi reared up, aside from the tentacles around its mouth, it looked just like a snake. A big, gross snake that had no respect for other people’s privacy.</p><p>It was on her mom’s page, looking through one of the albums there. Albums full of her mom and Kevin.</p><p>So it was pretty terrible, because Kevin was her mom’s boyfriend and one of the worst kinds of adult. He thought he knew what was cool, and tried to get along with her. It was so cringey that half of the time Kimberly couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him.</p><p>“For example,” Binchi tilted its head towards the laptop screen, “It seems that you have two parents, which is impressive as it seems that you are your mother’s only female offspring.”</p><p>“No,” Kimberly sighed, not wanting to explain that Kevin was her mom’s boyfriend and that she hadn’t seen her dad since she was a little kid.</p><p>“Ah,” the creature twitched its tail rapidly, “The smaller one is your sibling then? I see the resemblance. That at least makes far more sense.”</p><p>She heard it all the time, that she looked just like her mom, but she didn’t see it, her mom was tall and graceful from her hobby of dancing, while she was short and skinny and all angles, no curves. It said something that her mom had a boyfriend when she couldn’t even get the boys in her class to notice her. Somehow it figured that the first real compliment she’d gotten from someone who wasn’t related to her was from an alien slug-snake.</p><p>“That’s my mom,” Kimberly sighed.</p><p>The creature turned and looked her up and down, “Is the larger one her older sister? I cannot imagine two unrelated females together like that so casually and so often as implied by the images. Unless they are both fully mature and mated. Is that a strategy that your species uses, paired females cohabitate for financial reasons as well as to share the effort of raising their offspring?”</p><p>“That’s Kevin,” she rolled her eyes, “Mom’s boyfriend.”</p><p>“Boy?” the creature twisted back on itself in a sort of ‘S’ shape, “That implies juvenile, correct? So she’s an adolescent. That’s why your mother considers her a friend rather than competition. Your mother, a mated female is mentoring an unrelated female, just like in your animated entertainment!”</p><p>Now it was Kimberly’s turn to stare, “Boy as in boy. And what do you mean her?”</p><p>“The fuzzy one, Kevin, is a male?” The creature’s voice took on an odd buzzing note, “That’s a male of your species…”</p><p>“Yeah, Kevin’s a guy,” Kimberly sighed, “Can we talk about something else?”</p><p>“Of course!” the creature said, still buzzing slightly, “Yours is not a very dimorphic species. How do you tell each other apart?”</p><p>“What does that even mean?” She said, wondering if it would be rude to push Binchi off of her laptop and maybe, ‘accidentally’, onto the floor.</p><p>“Your males and females look the same,” it said simply.</p><p>Kimberly looked at Binchi, trying to figure out if it was joking, “You think Kevin and my mom look the same?”</p><p>“They have the same number of limbs, the same number of eyes, they’re roughly the same size,” it said, the buzzing rising in volume as it wrapped around her hand, “Do you rely on pheromones to tell each other apart?”</p><p>So much for pushing it off the desk. At least this way she could get it away from her laptop.</p><p>It had to be joking, but it was an alien… “You really can’t tell?”</p><p>It buzzed loudly in response, which raised another question.</p><p>“Are you laughing at me?” If it was laughing, she was going to shake it off of her arm and she’d be completely justified in doing so.</p><p>It froze, tightening its grip on her, “Expressing amusement? No, confusion.”</p><p>“That noise means you’re confused?” She pressed on, not sure if she believed it.</p><p>“Correct, this is not an amusing situation,” it crawled farther up her arm, “Yours is a very strange species and understanding this…I believe that several assumptions about your language and culture are untrue. Based on what you have said, my interpretations of numerous aspects in much of your entertainment that I have enjoyed are incorrect in certain ways. This changes so much…”</p><p>Great, talking to an alien about her mom and her mom’s boyfriend was causing it to have some sort of existential dilemma over its favorite cartoons. She didn’t even know how that worked, but it figured that it would happen to her. Changing the topic felt like the best thing to do, unless she wanted to talk to Binchi all night about her family and Kevin.</p><p>“Did you come all the way here just to watch cartoons?” Because that honestly wouldn’t have surprised her at this point.</p><p>“No,” the buzzing stopped, “I acted on impulse upon learning that my mother had decided that there was no need for me to continue higher education.”</p><p>“What?” Like many of the things Binchi said, the words made sense, but the way it put them all together was nonsense.</p><p>Binchi made a face, in as much as a snake was able to, it involved a lot of wiggling the little feeler things at the corners of his mouth, “Is university the term you use?”</p><p>University, like a college? Snake or not, Kimberly could not imagine Binchi at college. College kids were practically adults. They were supposed to be mature and stuff, not watching cartoons and asking weird questions. Though, in Binchi’s defense, it was an alien, so maybe on its home planet it knew a lot of things and was smart. If she ended up on its world she probably wouldn’t even have been able to talk to anyone, so it had that much going for it at least.</p><p>“Alright, you were in college and then you ended up here?” The answer to that question would be a start. What it would be a start of she didn’t know. Probably more questions, a lot more questions.</p><p>“Correct,” Binchi shook its tail like an agitated cat, “I was studying engineering as that is a desirable and profitable field of research, specifically with the goal of modeling systems to solve the logistics issues of facilitating largescale transport between worlds. Yours, despite being primitive, is rich in resources and creativity, as shown by your entertainment and rapid technological advancement. Perhaps it stems from some innate aspect of your biology, which is not at all what my people believed, if what you have told me is true. The pace at which you develop new technology is astounding. On my world, for instance, there was a close to thousand year gap between the equivalent of your industrial revolution to your present technological state. If your scientists were introduced to our technology they could easily throw our efforts forward a hundred years in.”</p><p>“Did you come here to kidnap a scientist to prove your point to your mom?” Because Kimberly could get that. It was like the plot of some stupid sci-fi movie, but she could get doing crazy things to prove a point. Like what Evan did last year during music class to prove to Samantha that he was sorry for what had happened at that party. That had been crazy.</p><p>“No…” Binchi tilted its head one way and then the other, “Though I wish I had thought of that. Having to work with a human scientist would have probably bought me some time. My professors at least would have petitioned my mother to postpone the wedding until I had finished my studies.”</p><p>“Wedding?” Always, she asked one question and got a dozen more.</p><p>“That is the term you use for the joining of a male and female, correct?” Binchi buzzed quietly, the sound closer to a cat’s purr than anything else she could place, “My mother had decided that I had gone unpaired for too long and had found a female that she felt was suitable for me.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Kimberly said, even if it wasn’t the way she would have phrased it. Binchi had gone from being something out of a sci-fi movie to some weird fairytale, running away from an arranged marriage.</p><p>There were so many more questions that she could ask, the answers she got probably wouldn’t be useful, but she wanted to ask them anyway, “You guys have arranged marriages?”</p><p>Because that didn’t seem like something an advanced alien species would do. It was more like something out of the middle ages.</p><p>“Yes, though by looking through the records of your relatives I can see why they are not necessary for your species,” it paused, wiggled slightly and then continued, “The sampling size is small, but it seems that the ratio of males to females on your world is roughly even?”</p><p>Again, it took her time to parse what it was saying, “Yeah, why?”</p><p>“With my species roughly one in ten hatchlings is a male so competition for mates is fierce between females and arranged marriages were traditionally the best way to prevent violence and put an end to the practice of egg theft. In the modern day those concerns are largely irrelevant, but my mother is very traditionally minded and does not think that it is right I have continued unpaired for so long. She believes that I should be paired and producing a clutch for her to brood over and my father does not understand. He thinks that the fact that the female my mother has chosen is in the same field of study as I am, as though my helping her with <em>her</em> research and improving her social standing amid <em>her</em> same age cohorts is some consolation for the loss of <em>my</em> own efforts,” Binchi stopped abruptly, “I realize that is a great deal of information simply to say that my mother wants me to settle down and have a family and I have no desire to give up on my own ambitions.”</p><p>So Binchi was a space alien nerd who had family and relationship trouble. Except for the nerd part, a lot of it was uncomfortably familiar. Her mom didn’t get why Kevin was so awful and why she wanted nothing to do with him, no guys would even look at her in school and she had no friends.</p><p>Not exactly the same as Binchi’s situation, but close enough that she got it.</p><p>“I’m sorry?” Kimberly said, not sure of what else to say, but feeling like she had to say something because silence would have been way too awkward.</p><p>“You have no reason to apologize,” Binchi let out a nearly inaudible buzz, “It is not as though you could petition my mother to let me continue my studies or challenge the female she selected to ritual combat to annul the marriage contract.”</p><p>Okay…even if she figured that she probably could win a fight with a snake, she wasn’t going to do something like that for Binchi. Besides, ritualized combat didn’t sound very normal, even if Binchi was an alien. It had to have been a joke. Of course, with Binchi being an alien, it might not have been.</p><p>“So you ran away from home so you wouldn’t have to get married and now you’re stuck here?” She asked, both to make sure she understood things and to see if it sounded any less weird when she said it out loud.</p><p>It didn’t.</p><p>“Mostly correct,” Binchi made a wiggling gesture with its tail, “Technically I am not stuck. If I wanted to it would not be too difficult to send a signal to my world. After all, we have been picking up your broadcasts even before we sent probes and the recent small numbers of researchers who have been to and from this world, just to prove it can be done.”</p><p>Okay, she didn’t know how she felt about that, knowing that Binchi’s world had been spying on Earth, when she wasn’t ready to trust it that it wasn’t planning an invasion. Though, if it was part of an invasion she’d like to think that an alien with advanced enough technology to travel between worlds would be smart enough to think of a less crazy story. How unbelievable Binchi’s story was made her more inclined to believe Binchi, like how Tiffany and her friends always came up with the perfect lies to sound innocent. Binchi was nowhere near that good, because she didn’t feel bad for it, and when Emma told the teachers that she and the others were just being nice the teachers always felt bad for doubting her.</p><p>“What else would you like to talk about?” Binchi said abruptly, “Being able to talk to a human in person is very exciting and very different from how you portray yourselves in broadcasts…though to be fair the same holds true in my world, so perhaps that is a universal truth, that there are far fewer mortal enemies and explosions in life than there in broadcast drama.”</p><p>“I wish there were fewer mortal enemies,” Kimberly sighed, because that was basically what Tiffany had decided she was.</p><p>Binchi tilted its head, “Really? Do you plan to fight them to the death? In a dramatic struggle that will push you to your limits? Or will you go to war against them? Calling on all the ties between your family band through your father and your mother’s sister’s mates to fight their family band to shame their daughters and take their sons? I would love to see that!”</p><p>Kimberly was pretty sure that wasn’t sarcasm. She didn’t even know if aliens had sarcasm.</p><p>“It doesn’t really work that way here,” she said at last, kind of wishing that she did have friends who could defend her from Tiffany and the others, or better yet, turn the tables on them. That would have been nice, Tiffany, Emma and Amber begging her and her friends to leave them alone.</p><p>“Ah,” Binchi tilted its head one way and then the other, “Typical juvenile competition for status.”</p><p>Hearing an alien tell her it was just teenage stuff, as though that was supposed to be helpful was not helpful.</p><p>Binchi immediately unwinding itself from around her hand and slithering back did help, because it gave her the sense that it understood that what it had said was stupid.</p><p>After that Binchi was more careful with its questions and encouraged Kimberly to ask questions of her own. The answers it gave didn’t always make sense based on what she’d asked, but she got the feeling that Binchi felt the same about some of the responses she gave.</p><p>In the end she did feel like she had a little better understanding of Binchi and Binchi knew how to use YouTube, which gave it plenty of opportunity to watch humans doing human things.</p><p>Sometime during the night it must have gotten its fill, because when she woke up in the morning her laptop was off and Binchi was curled up in the same pile of dirty clothing and had done a pretty good job of making himself at home.</p><p>When she got home from school she was going to have to clean her room some, because she didn’t like the idea of an alien nesting in the mess on her floor.</p><p>Of course the noise of her getting dressed was enough to wake Binchi up and it looked at her expectantly.</p><p>“Your species is even more fascinating in person than your entertainment suggests,” its eyes shone excitedly as it stretched to its fullest length and then curled itself into a knot in what was probably a snake’s version of stretching, “What will you be doing today and may I observe?”</p><p>That was the easiest thing ever to shoot down. She was going to school and taking Binchi with her wasn’t going to happen.</p><p>Except then she thought of all the trouble Binchi could cause if she left it alone in her room. Honestly, just the idea of leaving someone alone in her room to poke around in her stuff was unthinkable. What if Binchi found something embarrassing, like one of her diaries, or looked under her bed and found her stuffed animal collection, which she kept there within easy reach because sometimes she felt bad about not keeping her favorite plush toys on her bed anymore?</p><p>Add to that the fact that, from what it had said, Binchi was a boy, she really didn’t like the idea of leaving <em>him</em> alone in her room.</p><p>Yeah, Binchi was a snake-alien-thing, but the idea of leaving a <em>boy</em> to snoop around when she wasn’t there wasn’t a fun one. Actually, Binchi’s being an alien made it worse, because there was no telling where he’d look, what he’d find and what questions he’d ask. Especially if he got on her computer.</p><p>He didn’t need to know that she had accounts on five different virtual pet sites and that she was still <em>very</em> active on fan forums for an actor who’d stopped being popular years ago after that one stupid movie…</p><p>A movie she’d enjoyed enough that she’d downloaded it and still watched occasionally.</p><p>There was no way she could leave Binchi home alone, and that wasn’t even taking into account what would happen if, somehow, her mom ended up discovering him.</p><p>She wasn’t sure what would happen, but she was pretty sure that she’d get in trouble for something. Was it illegal to hide a space alien in your room and not tell anyone, even if you didn’t know who you were supposed to tell?</p><p>Why didn’t any of her classes teach useful things like that? Instead it was conjugating verbs in Spanish, reading about a bunch of deal old guys in history, and trying to figure out why she was even supposed to care about algebra.</p><p>“Do you want to come to school with me?” She asked nervously. The worst thing that could happen was that Binchi could say no.</p><p>“Of course!” Binchi slithered over to her, “Observing human social dynamics in person sounds exciting and attending classes with you will provide insight on what I should do next. Perhaps making contact with one of your professors would be the best course of action.”</p><p>Okay, Binchi saying no wasn’t the worst thing, because her stomach sank like a stone at his ridiculously enthusiastic answer.</p><p>“There are some rules,” she said quickly, wishing that she’d thought them up before making the offer, “One, you need to stay hidden. Two, don’t talk to anyone. Three, don’t say anything weird.”</p><p>There probably should have been a four, five and six, maybe more, but she couldn’t think of them.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. An Alien Perspective on High School Drama</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You walk to school?” Binchi whispered from inside the old backpack she’d put him and her books into. It was funny how once she’d realized that she didn’t want Binchi alone in her room because he was a boy it became easier for her to think of him as a ‘him’ rather than an it, despite his being a snake.</p><p>“Yes,” she whispered back, considering taking out her phone so no one would see her talking to herself and think that she was crazy, “At least until it gets too cold out or the weather’s bad. My mom refuses to drive otherwise and I don’t want to take the bus.”</p><p>“I’m impressed,” was his cryptic reply.</p><p>It really wasn’t that impressive though. The school was within walking distance, the bus ride was actually longer than walking because of all the stops, and even then she wasn’t taking the bus because even before Tiffany had decided to make her life hell, the bus had been its own kind of hell. No one ever wanted to sit with her and more than once, when someone at a later stop found every other seat taken, Kimberly found herself shoved out into the aisle where the driver would yell at her to sit back down. Everyone would laugh and no one would let her sit anywhere and the driver would keep yelling.</p><p>She didn’t even want to think about what it would be like now, because she knew that Amber and Emma took the same bus that she’d have to take and even without Tiffany to encourage them they were terrible.</p><p>The bus wasn’t worth it.</p><p>Kimberly felt Binchi move in the backpack, lifting his head to look out a gap in the zipper. She’d left the little opening so that he could breathe, but still found herself wondering if she should shut it. If anyone saw him…</p><p>“This part of you your planet is pleasantly decentralized,” Binchi commented, as though what he had said was a compliment or supposed to mean something to her, “Is this why you are such a creative species? Being so independent…”</p><p>“It’s not all like this,” Kimberly said and took out her phone. Alien or not, it was nice to have someone to talk to on her walk. It made her dread arriving at school a lot less, “There are cities and when I get into college I plan on moving to one.”</p><p>Which one she didn’t know, or care. She just wanted to be somewhere where there were people everywhere and something was always happening. That way she was bound to make friends and if there were bullies like Tiffany there would be too many other people for it to matter. ‘Big fish in a little pond’ was term that her mom had liked to toss around back when Kimberly had been able to bring herself to talk to her about the problems she was having at school with the way the popular girls treated her. A city would be like a whole ocean and it would be easy for her to avoid big fish like Tiffany, even if the whole fish metaphor creeped her out because fish were gross. It worked though, because thinking of Tiffany as a big, gross fish in a goldfish bowl was kind of funny.</p><p>“You are…not in university yet? That is what you mean by college, right?” Binchi sounded surprised, “You are still a juvenile?”</p><p>“I’m in high school,” she sighed, “I’ve got two more years before college.”</p><p>And she couldn’t wait, which was why she’d said two years, even if it was technically closer to three.</p><p>“Ah,” Binchi made a small chirping noise, “An adolescent. That makes sense. It does explain why you are as tall as you are, but have yet to fill out and develop armor.”</p><p>Okay…now he really wasn’t making sense. Where did he even get an idea like that and did she even want to know?</p><p>Probably not, but she asked anyway.</p><p>“I think you’re confused. What do you even mean armor?” Though what he was confusing people with she wasn’t sure. She didn’t watch cartoons so maybe he confused clothing with something? Like at different ages people wore different things? Like knights in the Middle Ages, maybe he thought that middle-aged people wore armor like that?</p><p>Binchi was silent for a long while, or relatively silent. He’d occasionally let out small hisses and squeaks, which she assumed was him muttering to himself in his own language. If not for her knowing what Binchi looked like, the sounds would have been cute, like her backpack was filled with mildly annoyed kittens rather than a confused snake-alien.</p><p>“I understand that humans are less sexually dimorphic…” he started slowly, almost nervously, “But…no, that would be incorrect as your males are not that much smaller…”</p><p>“Guys are bigger,” Kimberly interrupted, wanting to clear that up to avert whatever truly bizarre question he might have been thinking up.</p><p>“Bigger!” Binchi made a noise that she’d never heard from him before, a sort of whistle, “That would… I am in awe. Mate competition would be for larger, physically more capable males. Son theft would not have been a historic problem because…No, with a similar number of males to females…The size would mean males would be left unguarded hence your confusion and lack of need for armor. Larger males defend themselves better? Yours is a frighteningly savage species, though perhaps that finally explains the speed at which your technology has developed. Technological advancement would be yet another form of competition…”</p><p>“Am I supposed to respond to any of that?” Kimberly asked, hoping that the answer would be no, because it had been a bunch of gibberish to her.</p><p>“Only to correct me,” Binchi replied, “I am still having difficulty with how different your males and females are from my kind.”</p><p>That she actually sort of got, which meant that maybe she’d actually learned something useful in class after all. In biology, when talking about evolution and inherited traits, there were things like peacocks where the guys and girls looked totally different, so maybe to Binchi everyone looked drab and the same.</p><p>“What are girls like where you’re from?” As she asked Kimberly already knew that there was a good chance that she’d regret wondering about that. The last thing she needed to hear was Binchi go on about his girlfriend, saying things that would only make sense to an alien. What would an alien snake even think was attractive?</p><p>“Roughly your height. Fully mature, but unpaired females tend to be slightly taller and considerably more massive. Their scales are, in most places, larger and more heavily developed to form armor over the vulnerable places. They have a set of paired grasping limbs like you do, two sets of paired walking limbs and three sets of paired…I do not think that there is an Earth term for what those limbs do. Folding limbs might work, but that fails to describe what they do, simply appearance. Their six sets of eyes are located on the upper body, the final, frontal set is largely vestigial,” his enthusiasm grew as he spoke, as though vestigial eyes, whatever that meant, were a big deal, “A high, visible sagittal crest to anchor jaw muscles. Bite strength is largely irrelevant, but there is something to be said of a female with large, well developed jaws and thick, prominent tusks.”</p><p>She let Binchi keep talking, tuning him out as the description he gave got increasingly horror movie. What she got from it was that girls on his planet were nothing like the guys and she really, really didn’t want to get any more than that. Especially when he started going into detail about scale shape and patterns. What she got from that was that Binchi didn’t have a girlfriend and had a lot of movie stars, or whatever they were on his planet, that he admired.</p><p>It was definitely good that she hadn’t let him stay in her room because he would have found that one forum for sure…</p><p>Lost in thought, Kimberly wasn’t paying much attention as she approached the school, not bothering to check if the coast was clear as she headed to one of the side entrances that she knew would be open. It was a trick that she’d developed last year to avoid Tiffany. Of course it had become enough of a routine that it wasn’t like there wasn’t anyone who didn’t know she did it.</p><p>“Hey piggy-piggy,” Amber’s voice cut through her musings on whether she should try to explain to Binchi what made human guys and girls different.</p><p>“It’s because you were in the mud, like a pig,” Emma said helpfully, because Emma was dumb enough that she assumed everybody else was as dumb as she was.</p><p>Kimberly stayed quiet and kept her head down. Tiffany wasn’t there yet, so they might not be that bad, she was usually the one that really got them going, bringing out their worst.</p><p>“Aren’t you going to say hi to us?” Amber stepped in front of her, blocking her way to the door, “You’re really rude.”</p><p>“Hi,” she muttered, hoping that it would be enough for them.</p><p>“I don’t think you meant it,” Emma snickered, proving how dumb she was. How did someone even say ‘hi’ like they meant it?</p><p>“Hi Emma,” Kimberly repeated more loudly.</p><p>“What about me?” Amber shoved her, “Do you think you’re too good to talk to me? Because you’re not. You should be glad that I even want to talk to you.”</p><p>Kimberly took a step back and hefted her backpack. If she fell over she didn’t want to think about what would happen.</p><p>Amber shoved her again, then grabbed at her backpack and pulled, “It’s too heavy, I’ll take some stuff out for you.”</p><p>Emma grabbed the other strap of her backpack, “I’ll help too.”</p><p>Kimberly didn’t want to lose two backpacks in a row, not when she had a whole day of classes ahead of her, but she knew if she fought back she’d be the one who got in trouble. Emma and Amber would run to the nearest teacher and back each other up so that Kimberly would be the one who came out of it looking like the bully.</p><p>Binchi, thankfully, had the sense not to say anything. The last thing she needed was to end up in the principal’s office having to explain why she threw a snake at Emma and Amber. Then the whole story about Binchi would come out and she’d be in even more trouble.</p><p>“Here!” Amber shoved her backpack upwards.</p><p>Emma did the same, forcing it up her back and then over her head.</p><p>Overbalanced, Kimberly fell to the ground.</p><p>It was something that had happened enough times that she managed to catch herself on her hands and knees so she didn’t land face first. She still had her backpack over her head, keeping her off balance, but that wasn’t the worst situation she’d been in. The backpack was still on her.</p><p>“I’ve got an idea!” Emma said excitedly.</p><p>Kimberly wondered if Emma sounded so excited because it was the first idea she’d ever had and was tempted to say as much.</p><p>“I’ll help you up!” Laughing hilariously at her own cleverness, Emma grabbed Kimberly by the shirt.</p><p>Oh no, she was going to tear her shirt! Usually Amber was the one that attacked her clothing, trying to ruin it. Kimberly froze. She had a spare in her locker, but that would mean going to her locker with a torn shirt, then to the bathroom, changing and then arriving late to homeroom and having to explain why.</p><p>Except then she lifted Kimberly’s shirt.</p><p>Oh god, it was even worse, she was going to pull her shirt off over her head. By now they had to have drawn a crowd and…</p><p>But she didn’t keep pulling her shirt, once it was out of the way she grabbed the back of Kimberly’s bra and pulled as hard as she could.</p><p>Elastic dug into her chest, it hurt, because of course it did, and Emma kept pulling until the clasp snapped.</p><p>True to form, Emma hadn’t expected that and ended up falling over.</p><p>She screamed, Amber screamed.</p><p>The other kids who’d come over to laugh laughed even louder because it seemed that any one’s misfortune was funny.</p><p>And over it all she heard Tiffany’s voice, “Oh boy are you ever going to be in trouble, beating up Emma like that! She was only trying to help you after you tripped over your ugly shoes and you went and pulled her down like that and called her mean names!”</p><p>Tiffany saying it meant that was the story that was going to go around school and what she was going to get in trouble for.</p><p>The crowd around her dispersed, no one staying to offer her a hand getting up as she struggled to pull her shirt and backpack down without falling over or making thigs even worse. Her bra was ruined, the elastic all stretched out and the clasp torn completely off, adding insult to injury when that really wasn’t necessary. The whole day was going to be uncomfortable and awkward as she waited to get in trouble for whatever Tiffany, Emma and Amber said about her.</p><p>“Those were also females?” Binchi asked quietly once Tiffany and the others were gone.</p><p>“Yes,” Kimberly whispered, looking around to make sure no one was watching as she carried on a hushed conversation with her backpack. She had enough trouble as it was that she didn’t need people thinking that she was crazy.</p><p>“That at least makes sense.”</p><p>Did Binchi have to deal with bullies as well, even though he was an alien and in college? Somehow that was comforting, that mean girls were universal. And if that were the case maybe he had advice. He was a guy after all, and they tended to not to get bothered by bullies.</p><p>“This happens on your planet?” Because even if he was an alien maybe what he’d have to say would be useful.</p><p>“Of course,” Binchi let out the little hiccup noise that she’d come to figure out meant that he was happy, “Females fight all the time.”</p><p>“Like that?” Again she had to wonder if Binchi knew English as well as he thought he did, because he was always messing up guys and girls when he talked about things. Boys were the ones who fought, except she couldn’t imagine how a pair of snakes would fight and the way he’d described girls made it pretty clear that they weren’t snakes.</p><p>Binchi hiccupped again, “Of course they do! Then again, you probably don’t get into many fights, do you?”</p><p>“I…uh…” she had no clue what that was even supposed to mean.</p><p>Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, Binchi continued, “I was watching the whole time. All of the others avoided you except for those three. The others won’t even make eye contact with you, which shows how afraid they are. And the three that did act you, they must be very afraid to be willing to band together to try and fight you. Clearly you’re the dominant female of your age cohort. If you had caught any of them alone they would have been no match.”</p><p>That was a lot to take in. Binchi was wrong in so many different ways that she didn’t even know where to start.</p><p>After school she was going to need to give him a long talk about the way things worked on Earth, because he clearly had no clue.</p><p>And the worst part was, it sounded like a compliment, because of course an alien would be impressed by her and think she was something special. Why couldn’t Binchi have been a normal guy?</p><p>It would have been so amazing if one of the guys on the soccer team, like Thomas or Mike had seen her in the mud yesterday and offered her a hand out, or even one of the guys on the cross-country team, they were always running around everywhere for practice so it would have made sense that one of them could have jogged by while she was in the ditch. If she’d hit it off with them the way she had with Binchi, then all of her troubles would be over.</p><p>But instead it was a crazy alien.</p><p>On one hand, she’d finally made a friend.</p><p>On the other, that friend didn’t even have hands.</p><p>Or any clue how things were supposed to work.</p><p>At least it was a distraction from everything else as she trudged to homeroom to wait.</p><p>Classes were an ordeal, the teachers looking at her wordlessly when she admitted that she had no homework to turn in, asking her why she didn’t have a notebook and frowning when she had to ask for new textbooks to replace the ones ruined in the mud. It was one embarrassment after another and the way they all looked at her, disapproving, but also knowing.</p><p>The only reprieve was that during study hall, while everyone else was talking to their friends rather than doing school work, she had someone to talk to. As long as she kept her head down and a book open no one would ever notice that she was talking to her backpack under her desk.</p><p>“The three of them were bothering you yesterday,” Binchi said, sounding strangely excited. Then again, if he watched a lot of shows and cartoons he probably thought that there’d be some sort of turn-about or justice for what had happened, rather than the rest of high school being miserable for her.</p><p>In books and movies the popular, mean girls always got put in their place and good things happened to whoever they’d been picking on, but real life didn’t work that way, which was why as soon as she could she wanted to get as far from her tormenters as possible.</p><p>Binchi had to know that though, he’d run away as well. Or maybe he thought that things were different on Earth. Once she explained things to him he was bound to be disappointed, probably as much as she was to learn that even aliens had to run away to get away from stuff they didn’t want to have to deal with.</p><p>“Yeah, they always bother me,” Kimberly sighed, trying to make it look like she was actually doing school work so the teacher wouldn’t come over to see what she was doing. It was stupid, everyone else was talking and joking, obviously not doing anything, but they never got told to stop. On the other hand, if a teacher even thought that she had her phone out Kimberly would never hear the end of it.</p><p>“Together?” Binchi marveled, as though it was impressive that she had to deal with three people tormenting her every day.</p><p>“Of course,” Kimberly rolled her eyes. The three of them were inseparable, always hanging out together, backing each other up and working together to make her as miserable as possible. Right now they were probably hanging out in the hall or bathroom together, working on the story they’d tell to get her in trouble.</p><p>“That would make fighting them difficult. With only a single set of walking limbs your balance is precarious and to turn to face attackers from multiple directions you would have to unbalance yourself. A single, forward facing set of eyes also…Yes, I can see why weaker females would work together on a primitive world such as this, especially if they have no sisters,” it sounded like Binchi was replying the events of the morning, trying to think of them as a fight, which made his calling her primitive kind of hypocritical since an advanced alien probably shouldn’t have thought such things, “They must be of particularly low standing in your age cohort, hence the posturing and vying for position.”</p><p>“They’re not,” Kimberly sighed, “They’re really popular and have <em>so</em> many friends.”</p><p>“As I said,” Binchi hiccupped, pleased with himself, “Low standing. They rely on numbers rather than skill or intelligence.”</p><p>“What does that even mean?” Because she honestly wanted to know. Binchi was insulting them, in an alien kind of way, and she wanted in on that, having a friend to talk to and say mean things about the people who were mean to her.</p><p>“They want people to protect them, and are afraid to fight for themselves, on their own.”</p><p>That was so absolutely right in describing Tiffany and her friends that Kimberly was kind of shocked that she hadn’t seen it that way before. The three of them would always start trouble when no teachers were watching and then run to find one as fast as they could. They were always saying awful things about pretty much anyone they didn’t like, reserving the worst treatment for her, and making it clear that anyone who helped her would be treated the same way.</p><p>It also wasn’t the advanced, space alien advice she’d been hoping for. She was starting to realize that Binchi being an alien meant that he had a very different way of seeing the world, and not at all like what she’d expected, though when she thought about it she really didn’t know what she’d expected.</p><p>“Do you have any advice for dealing with them?” She asked, not because she expected an answer that would be any more helpful than what her parents and teachers had to say, but because she was curious.</p><p>“Perhaps,” was his cryptic response, followed by an even more cryptic question of his own, “Friendship is a human concept that confuses me. It is central to the social dynamics in your cartoons, but it seems contradictory and poorly explained. Could you explain it to me?”</p><p>Not having friends of her own meant it was really tough to try and describe it.</p><p>Thankfully Binchi elaborated.</p><p>“You seem to have implied that the three who attack you are friends and in your cartoons friendship is a concept holding wildly disparate individuals together, compensating for weaknesses and assisting each other, often with no direct benefit. So I assume that it involves awareness of weaknesses and individuals who are strong in those ways.”</p><p>That wasn’t exactly it, but Binchi was an alien so maybe they didn’t have friends? She couldn’t imagine that though.</p><p>“Don’t you have people that you like to be around?” Kimberly wondered, trying to figure out if that was a good way to start trying to teach Binchi about friendship. Teaching an alien how friends worked sounded like something out of a little kids’ cartoon, which given what she knew about Binchi seemed like the kind of thing that would appeal to him.</p><p>“To a degree,” he said thoughtfully, “I have peers with interesting ideas and who are especially pleasant to work with. If I need help with my own work or have ideas that I feel the need to discuss I will seek them out, but it does not match friendship as presented in your cartoons. It may be that the majority of them are unpaired females and there was always an element of them trying to impress me.”</p><p>That was a really weird thought, girls trying to show off for guys rather than the other way around, but from what Binchi had described it made sense. It was still weird though. Except Binchi had said that guys were really rare, so that might have explained things. Would she have had friends if she was the only girl in any of her classes?</p><p>“Were any of the girls in your classes friends with each other?” That might have been a better way of approaching the question.</p><p>Binchi made a small, thoughtful noise, but other than that he was silent.</p><p>He didn’t speak again until right before the bell rang.</p><p>“I think I understand now,” he said quietly, “Friendship is a circumstance of necessity.”</p><p>Unfortunately the bell rang seconds later and Kimberly had to hurry to her next class. Their conversation continued in bits and pieces for the rest of the day, never really going anywhere, but Binchi seemed to enjoy it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Not How Being Friends Works</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The rest of the day passed uneventfully, somehow. The anticipated call to the office to explain her encounter with Tiffany, Amber and Emma never happened, probably because they ended up being unable to agree on a good story to use to get her in trouble. She’d only had one class with Emma that day, so other than having her homework stolen and torn in half when the teacher wasn’t looking, there was little trouble.</p><p>Binchi had taken offense to that. Apparently the three of them attacking her was one thing, but her school work being ruined was where he drew the line, an attack on her merits and academic effort rather than on her person, was what he’d called it, and it had outraged him. Alien priorities were strange.</p><p>Like any other adult he was convinced that she should say something and wouldn’t take that Emma and the others would retaliate in some worse way as an answer.</p><p>As soon as she was out the door and heading home, keeping a careful eye out for Tiffany, she could feel Binchi moving around in her backpack to look outside.</p><p>Having someone to watch her back was reassuring, even if that someone was an alien snake.</p><p>“I believe I could consider you a friend,” Binchi said completely out of nowhere, like it was something he’d spent the whole day thinking over.</p><p>Finally, she had a friend, for all the good it did her. At least during awkward conversation with her mom that night she’d be able to say things were looking up and she’d made a friend.</p><p>“Thanks?” She replied, wishing that she felt more grateful, or at least sounded that way.</p><p>“You do not need to thank me,” Binchi said, “It will be a mutually beneficial relationship. You are dissatisfied with your social standing, I am in a difficult situation. We both have much to gain.”</p><p>“How does you being my friend fix that?” Because if he answered something about at least she had a friend now, she was willing to lose another backpack by taking it off and dropping it on the ground, leaving him to go back to fending for himself. She didn’t need pity, or someone’s condescending attempts at making things better.</p><p>“I have my own goals in life, goals that involve not being paired to some female of my mother’s choosing. If my understanding of friendship is correct in that it is a close bond between peers entirely unrelated to reproduction, then our being friends will improve both our situations,” Binchi slithered out of her backpack to sit on top of it as he spoke, better for him to look out for trouble, “Paired females have an advantage due to the hormonal and metabolic changes that come with the pairing. They are, as a rule larger, stronger and overall more capable of aggression.”</p><p>Again with saying words that meant sense on their own, but not in the sentences that he put them in.</p><p>“Binchi,” Kimberly closed her eyes, trying to imagine if there was any less ridiculous way of putting things than what she was about to say. There wasn’t, of course, not with the way Binchi had said what he’d said. She’d just have to say what was on her mind and wait for him to correct her, “The power of friendship isn’t a thing, no matter what the shows you watch might make you think. Being your friend isn’t going to suddenly make me able to stand up to Tiffany and her friends, it’s not going to like, empower me or anything like that.”</p><p>She’d meant to say more, but Binchi interrupted her with a hiccup.</p><p>“Of course not!” Several more hiccups followed, “The increase in muscle mass and bone density will do that!”</p><p>“Being friends literally makes you guys stronger?” She asked, incredulous. That was some serious little kids’ show logic going on there. Even for an alien she wasn’t willing to believe it. Binchi had to be making a joke, some sort of horrible, terrible joke that only an alien would think was funny, because she certainly didn’t think it was funny. He was probably thirty seconds from her dumping her backpack and leaving him.</p><p>“Not being friends,” the hiccupping stopped, as though she was the one being stupid, “The results of the bonding process…except…I… that must not be how it works between members of your species. It should still work though. Research has shown that genetic structure is conserved between species between our respective worlds to the degree where there should be no issues beyond the possibility of a slightly longer acclimation period. Far more dissimilar species are capable of similar relationships and –”</p><p>Now it was her turn to cut him off, “None of that means anything to me. You don’t know how humans work and I’ve got no clue about anything about you.”</p><p>“Humans are…” Binchi paused, trying to find the right word, “Very confusing. Your species is not simply not dimorphic, your juveniles look like miniature adults.”</p><p>That wasn’t true, but that was something she could explain after Binchi finished. She didn’t want to interrupt and take things on a weird, or even weirder, tangent.</p><p>“Or at least you don’t have a true larval stage,” Binchi continued, “We do. Hatchlings emerge as larvae, and undergo several molts before reaching adulthood. Females grow into a distinct mature form, looking nothing like they do as larva, while males simply grow larger, maintaining otherwise juvenile morphology and gain adult coloration after their penultimate molt. The final molt does not occur for a male until after her is paired and bonded with a female.”</p><p>She didn’t need to hear talk about larvae and molting, because she really didn’t need to learn that Binchi was a bug-alien-snake, though now that she thought about it, Kimberly realized that the description that he’d given of the girls on his planet was distinctly buggy with all the legs and eyes.</p><p>And of course his explanation explained nothing, “What does this have to do with us being friends?”</p><p>Binchi leaned over her shoulder, “I would like to pair with you. As this would not be with the goal of reproduction, as we are of different species, we would simply be friends in a mutually beneficial relationship.”</p><p>“I need to think about this,” she said when he finished talking, or at least paused long enough for her to say something. What she meant was that she needed to figure out what he was even saying, but Binchi didn’t take it that way.</p><p>Instead he kept talking.</p><p>“I believe, as we are of different species and both have something to gain from the pairing, it would be the form of friendship known as symbiosis,” he said happily, “Human interactions and relationships are very complicated, which is why I find them so fascinating.”</p><p>“What do you mean ‘something to gain’?” Kimberly asked, because she wasn’t sure how she felt about his framing friendship as a situation where they’d both gain something. Yeah, that was kind of how it worked, but hearing it stated so bluntly was uncomfortable.</p><p>“I can help you deal with the females tormenting you and, in turn, you can help me contact my home world at a time most beneficial to me,” Binchi said, sounding like he was surprised that it took that much explaining.</p><p>Kimberly had figured that he wouldn’t be in a hurry to call home, having run away and all, but she supposed he wouldn’t want to stay on Earth forever. She tried to imagine ending up on his world, whatever it was like, full of snake-bug-aliens and shuddered at the thought.</p><p>She should have thought about it more, maybe asked more questions, but what Binchi said next sounded too good to pass up.</p><p>“I can help you finish your schooling, the time it takes will let me gain the necessary understanding of your planet’s level of technology and so that when we eventually contact my world we will be in a position to negotiate things most favorably for the two of us.”</p><p>Having an alien help her with her school work and possibly offer her alien technology wasn’t something any sane person would turn down, especially when she could end up famous for it. With Binchi’s help there was no telling what she might be able to invent and, if she were the one to start some kind of trade partnership with Binchi’s world, which was what it sounded like was his goal, even if she didn’t end up famous for it she’d probably at least end up rich. Yeah, it would mean living where there were snake-bug-things walking around, but at the same time, what would be getting farther away than going to a different planet?</p><p>“Okay,” she agreed, not exactly without hesitation, but more enthusiastically than she would have thought possible to muster when she first met Binchi.</p><p>“Thank you,” he said with great sincerity, “You agreeing means a great deal to me and gives me hope of returning to my world sooner rather than later.”</p><p>“Because you need my help for that?” She asked. They were officially friends now, which made conversation easier.</p><p>“Of course not,” Binchi said, but didn’t hiccup with laughter, “I could manage that on my own at any time. Data transmission between worlds was how we discovered you in the first place. While you were sleeping I looked into it and with only minor programing modifications it would be possible for me to contact my world through your computer, crude a machine as it is. What I could not have done was establish contact on my terms. Returning before I had a proper plan would make me an academic curiosity for a short time, but it would only postpone the inevitable.”</p><p>“You getting married,” Kimberly half asked, half stated.</p><p>“Exactly.”</p><p>She wasn’t sure how her being friends with him would fix things, unless women ran things on his world and her speaking up on his behalf meant something, which, given the way he’d described the girls on his would made sense. Still, if they were so much more advanced than humans that didn’t sound right at all.</p><p>“Don’t you have any say in who you get married to?” Kimberly wondered, feeling bad for Binchi, but also feeling bad for doubting the truth of what he’d said to her so far. They were supposed to be friends…</p><p>Binchi clicked his teeth, “We have an expression on my world that translates literally to ‘take the biting end’, it means to make a superlatively bad decision, you can imagine its origins, but no, there is an element of societal pressure. I would have to explain my choices to my family and peers, the dynamics between myself, unpaired females and paired male/female sets would change and my future prospects would likely be impacted negatively because my choice would be questioned. Besides, I know how both my mother and father would respond to such a decision on my part. There are some things that one simply does not do, especially if one has four sisters who all have ambitions as well. If I rejected a choice made by my mother they would suggest options of their own, seeking to increase their own social standing by offering me to a female in their peer group. Social dynamics between females are complex and not a game I wish to play without direct benefit to myself.”</p><p>Okay, that she understood perfectly, having to deal with pressure not just from his family, but everyone around him, and the idea of four sisters who’d boss him around? It made Kimberly glad that she was an only child because peer pressure from her classmates was bad enough as it was, having her family on her case all the time, not that her mom wasn’t, would have been more than she could have handled.</p><p>The two of them talked back on forth on the walk home.</p><p>Her mom was still at work, of course, so she made a snack for herself and Binchi in the kitchen, Binchi watching, far more impressed than an advanced alien had any right to be as she peeled an orange for him and divided it up into sections.</p><p>Peeling it proved pointless, as he ate the rind when she got up to get herself a drink of soda from the fridge.</p><p>Aliens.</p><p>She gave him a bowl of water, because it wasn’t like there was any way for him to use a glass, and they kept talking, about school, her plans for after she graduated and plans in general. Binchi had a lot more going on in terms of plans, but he admired her goal of getting out of high school and getting into college in the city, actually expressing interest in different colleges and offering to help her figure out what to study when she admitted that she had no idea what she wanted to do other than get away.</p><p>It was exactly the sort of thing that she figured friends talked about, which made it all the more shocking when Binchi reared up to look her in the eye from across the table.</p><p>“Shall we consummate becoming friends before your mother returns?” He asked, sounding excited, not that she was that good a judge of that given he was an alien snake and didn’t have much in the way of facial expressions. There was something about his tone though, and the way he twitched his tail. He was excited and that excitement was contagious.</p><p>“How?” She figured that it would be some alien ritual or something, that she might need to repeat something in his own language back or something like that. It didn’t set off any alarm bells though, because back in elementary school when she still had friends there were all sorts of silly things she’d done with them to prove their friendship, and just from looking in from the outside it didn’t feel like high school was that different. Who could sit where on the bus and who talked to who in the cafeteria was an intricate ballet, ever changing and complex.</p><p>Binchi slithered across the table and up her arm to sit on her shoulder. Already his weight there felt familiar, comforting.</p><p>“We will bond,” he whispered.</p><p>“Like talk and stuff?” Because that was what she assumed he meant. That was what friends did.</p><p>“It is a form of communication,” he said, uncoiling his tail to let it drape down her back, “Pheromonal for the most part, but verbal and tactile elements are important as well.”</p><p>She had no clue what that meant, but she figured that she’d learn or figure it out.</p><p>Leaving the dishes in the sink, she went to her room and closed the door. The last thing she needed was to lose track of time and have her mom walk in on her having a conversation with Binchi at the kitchen table.</p><p>She sat down on her bed and motioned for Binchi to sit down next to her and get comfortable, but he didn’t, choosing to remain draped over her shoulders.</p><p>“So, what do you want to talk about?” Kimberly asked, “How you’re going to help me with Tiffany and her friends? Or just about stuff in general?”</p><p>Binchi hissed, not like a snake, but like a snake trying to sigh and Kimberly had to struggle not to laugh. He’d never made a sound like that, but there was something hilarious about it.</p><p>“Where are your pheromone receptive organs?” Binchi asked, because he was always asking stuff like that, questions that she couldn’t answer because she couldn’t even figure out what they were supposed to mean in the first place.</p><p>“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.</p><p>“You must have them,” he said after a short pause, “You are clearly responsive, or am I mistaken?”</p><p>“How would I even know?” Kimberly laughed, feeling suddenly warm, like she was a little kid and it was Christmas Eve and because all of the adults were distracted she was able to sneak a drink of Champaign. She’d hated the taste, but the bubbles and the way that it left her feeling warm despite being cold had made the flavor worth it.</p><p>“You would be feeling relaxed,” Binchi replied, lifting his head slightly, “Are you feeling relaxed? More receptive?”</p><p>“Are you psychic? Is that what you’re talking about?” Because she had no idea what pheromones were, “Are you doing something to my brain?”</p><p>“In that pheromones influence behavior, yes,” Binchi answered, sliding down from her shoulder to sit on her lap to better look up at her, “But the basis is a purely physical response to chemical signals. I don’t know the degree to which such signals are conserved between our species though. While technically unnecessary, the appropriate responses will certainly help facilitate things.”</p><p>“How would I know?” Kimberly leaned back on the bed, trying to get comfortable and wondering if she should turn on a fan. It was definitely getting warm in the room and she knew it bugged her mom when she messed around with the AC without asking.</p><p>“I…” Binchi tilted his head to the side, “I do not actually know. It was not something that was ever represented in the media from your world I watched and it was not something I had considered researching. I do notice a difference in coloration and body temperature indicative of changes in circulation though.”</p><p>“This is weird,” Kimberly sighed and fell back on the bed. The movement overbalanced Binchi, who was still holding his front half up, causing him to fall down across her chest, his head resting at the base of her neck. It was all weird, the situation, talking to Binchi, how she felt.</p><p>That was high school though, everything was weird.</p><p>“I am curious,” Binchi stated, and then made things even weirder by sticking his head under the collar of her shirt and slithering down across her chest.</p><p>Unlike a snake, he wasn’t cold or slimy, his scales were smooth and warm, his weight somehow comforting, like how she’d lay back and hold one of her stuffed animals after a really bad day at school, when she didn’t want her mom to come home and see her upset. It made her wish that she had a pet of some sort, a small fluffy dog, or a cat, or something. Binchi wasn’t a pet, he was a person, because he could talk, but that didn’t stop her from putting a hand on her chest to rest it on him through her shirt.</p><p>He coiled and shifted, brushing against her breasts and something about the contact sent a shiver through her, despite how warm she felt.</p><p>Binchi moved again and she felt her nipples perk up, the feeling of her bra rubbing against them suddenly more than she could take.</p><p>Without thinking she brought her free hand under her shirt to lift her bra up from her breasts.</p><p>“Skin to skin contact seems rare with your species,” Binchi spoke and she could feel the way his body moved as he breathed in and out, “Is it a taboo or are you that fragile?”</p><p>Fragile was one way of putting it, Kimberly smiled wryly as she thought of the humiliation that came with changing for gym class, because there was nothing worse than having your shirt taken from you and thrown into the toilet, forcing you to wear a wrinkly old t-shirt all day, which was why she’d started to keep spares in her locker in the first place.</p><p>“Oh,” Binchi’s head lifted slightly, “This is interesting though. What is the purpose?”</p><p>He rubbed his snout against one of her nipples and she gasped.</p><p>“Did that hurt?” He drew back quickly, “I did not mean harm to a sensory organ.”</p><p>“It didn’t hurt,” Kimberly said quickly, about to tell him that he just shouldn’t have touched her there, shouldn’t have been beneath her shirt in the first place because he was a boy and…and the touch had felt good.</p><p>“This is amusing,” Binchi slid his head back and forth over her chest, “Little bumps on your skin, like when a female raises her scales to change the pattern of reflected light.”</p><p>Until he’d mentioned it, Kimberly hadn’t noticed she had goosebumps all up and down her arms. She could feel them across her chest as well.</p><p>“If you had scales I imagine I would know what this meant,” Binchi commented, slithering in a loop around and between her breasts.</p><p>She wanted to tell him to stop, that what he was doing was too weird, but it felt good.</p><p>“I can guess though,” he lifted his head, rested it on her breast, she felt his tongue dart out, flicking against her nipple, “I think that you enjoy this.”</p><p>She nodded then realized that Binchi couldn’t see what she was doing.</p><p>“Yes,” she hissed through clenched teeth.</p><p>“It is funny that you cover these parts of yourself when they are so expressive,” Binchi said, coiling back and forth, weaving around her breasts, occasionally bumping his nose against one of her nipples, or licking her, the little feelers at the corners of his mouth unfolding to gently poke and prod, “It is nice that you trust me like this, to see the expressive parts of you.”</p><p>Did she trust him though? He was an alien, she barely knew him and…</p><p>It wasn’t as though she wasn’t enjoying this, not just how it felt, but the attention in general, from a boy, one who was older than her, mature even if he was strange.</p><p>Extremely strange.</p><p>“Yours is not a very tactile species, which I can understand. No scales to protect you, so you cover yourselves and avoid contact,” Binchi continued winding his way around her chest, seemingly fascinated by her breasts, “It must be a very lonely way to be.”</p><p>“It’s not –” But to say she wasn’t lonely wasn’t true, not when she’d found herself so often lamenting not having friends of her own to help her with Tiffany and her friends. Binchi had offered to help her with that, which was why she was going along with what he was doing.</p><p>There was more to it though, at least now there was. At the moment she was going along with what Binchi was doing because it felt good.</p><p>Which was why, when Binchi twisted to curl his tail around her breasts and then try to work his nose under the waist of her pants, she unzipped them rather than telling him to stop.</p><p>And to think, when she’d first met Binchi she’d been afraid of his thoughts in her head and what that might do to her. This was way, way worse and she was still afraid, but still letting him do it.</p><p>Well, she <em>had</em> hoped that this would be the year she finally got a boyfriend and she had, sort of.</p><p>Her panties were wet, of course. There was no way they wouldn’t have been after what he’d done to her, what he was still doing, flicking the tip of his tail back and forth.</p><p>“You must be receptive to pheromones!” Binchi exclaimed happily, and she felt his tongue against her slit, tasting, “Though this is different.”</p><p>She’d touched herself plenty of times, but Binchi was the first other person to touch between her legs, yet another source of bitterness when the other girls bragged about their boyfriends and what they’d done. Kimberly wasn’t sure if she believed them, but it wasn’t like she’d had any experience of her own to say that they were lying.</p><p>“Here,” she tried to guide Binchi’s head into the correct place, but he pushed her hand aside.</p><p>“I know what I’m doing, I just need to figure you out,” Binchi licked her again, slick tongue dragging across her clit, “This is not the first time I have played at this, simply the first time with a female of another species.”</p><p>And snake-alien-bug or not, he had figured things out pretty well on his own, licking at her clit and occasionally lower, dragging his tongue across her slit.</p><p>Letting go of her breasts, he used his body to push her pants farther down, allowing him to nestle between her legs, pressing against her, sliding back and forth, using not just his tongue, but his whole body to pleasure her. The little feelers at the sides of his mouth proved to be surprisingly strong and dexterous, not to mention much longer than they’d seemed at first glance, gently circling her clit, making her shiver with pleasure, before moving down to investigate her slit.</p><p>She was so wet that it could have been by accident that Binchi’s nose slid in when his feelers began to spread her open, but he continued to press.</p><p>“What are you doing?” She gasped, trembling when his tongue flicked out and hit some spot inside her that made her muscles tense and then relax, as though her body were inviting him to continue.</p><p>“Trust me,” his voice was slightly muffled by what he was doing, but because he was an alien the movements of his tongue and feelers never faltered, “This is all part of the pairing process. We will join together.”</p><p>Sex, he meant sex, but the way he put it was like something out of a bad romance story.</p><p>She could have told him to stop, grabbed him and pulled him away, or even just closed her legs, but that would mean an end to what he was doing and it felt so good, better than the times she’d touched herself because there was an element of unpredictability. She didn’t know when he was going to push further in, where his tongue or feelers would next touch, other than deeper and deeper into her.</p><p>When he pushed his head all the way in there was a moment of pain, just a moment as the widest part of his body slid into her. She tensed, letting out a little whimper, but the pain quickly vanished and was forgotten as he found new places to touch, feelers stroking her from the inside.</p><p>She could feel the texture of his scales as he slowly worked more and more of his length into her.</p><p>“Careful, please,” she whispered, knowing it was pointless. Binchi probably couldn’t hear her and she had no idea what he was even doing, other than moving around her in a way that felt both wonderful and awful.</p><p>Despite his size, he was almost bonelessly compressible, or at least that was how it felt as he continued to work his way into her, each movement making her wince or gasp. Her teeth chattering as she writhed helplessly.</p><p>She could feel the pressure of him inside her, the movements of his feelers, and then, at last, the feeling of his tail pressing against her clit, wiggling harder and harder until she came.</p><p>That wasn’t the end of it though, working with the tensing and relaxing of her muscles he slid the rest of the way in, his movements somehow prolonging her orgasm, seconds ticked by into minutes.</p><p>There had to be something Binchi was doing, because the pleasure didn’t end, waves and waves of it building on each other, greater and greater until that was all she could focus on.</p><p>Her vision narrowed to a pinpoint and then to nothing.</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Alien Biology</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Binchi?” she gasped, waking up from a restless sleep. There was no moment of confusion, no wondering what had happened, why she was so tired and why her thighs were slick with wetness. She remembered exactly what had happened and she wanted an explanation, but none came.</p><p>“Where are you?” she sat up in bed, wincing at how tender the muscles between her legs and in her stomach felt. It was like she’d been doing sit-ups for hours, except the tiredness went deeper, somehow.</p><p>He wasn’t in the nest of dirty clothes that he’d made for himself and he wasn’t using her laptop, which was a mercy. The door to her room was closed and he couldn’t have gotten out, not without hands and even if he had, would he have thought to close it behind himself?</p><p>She searched her room, but there was no trace of him anywhere, nothing to prove that she hadn’t imagined it all except for the state she was in, tired and sore in way’s she’d never been before.</p><p>Knowing that there was an alien loose in her house should have been terrifying, but Binchi had been harmless enough and he was just a snake thing, what could he do to cause trouble?</p><p>Actually, once she thought about it, there was probably plenty that he could do, but after looking around her room one last time, turning over the piles of laundry on the floor, looking under her bed and even checking in the closet, she decided that there were more pressing matters at hand, one of them being how badly she needed a shower.</p><p>Giving up for the time being, she went and took a shower, finishing up just as her mom got home, which provided a new distraction.</p><p>She ended up having to help make dinner, and carry on awkward conversation with her mom.</p><p>At least when her mom asked if she was finally making friends she’d been able to answer truthfully that yes, she did have a friend, a weird new guy. Telling her about Binchi without mentioning that he was an alien was the conversational equivalent of walking on a tightrope, but she thought that she managed pretty well.</p><p>She surprised herself with how hungry she was. Normally she couldn’t stand stuffed peppers, at least not the way her mom cooked them. She was sure if they were seasoned right, or at all, they’d be fine, but tonight the lack of salt and too much of whatever else it was her mom put in them didn’t matter.</p><p>After dinner she went to her room, intending to look for Binchi one last time before doing her homework, because the last thing she needed was for him to surprise her mom or something like that.</p><p>Instead, she ended up making a halfhearted attempt to search before laying down on her bed and falling asleep almost instantly.</p><p>She woke up the next morning, feeling tired and out of sorts after a restless sleep filled with the weirdest dreams. There wasn’t much she could remember about them except in them she found herself wandering through places she’d never been, strange buildings where the sense of scale was all off and the more she tried to remember them the less sense any of it made.</p><p>It took her long enough to get out of bed that her mom came to check on her and said that if she wasn’t feeling well she could stay home.</p><p>Kimberly nodded and went right back to sleep.</p><p>Several times during the day she woke up to get herself a snack and then went right back to bed. Though she didn’t have much of a temperature everything else felt like she was running a fever, the weird aches, nothing seeming to be steady and the sense that things were moving when she knew they were still.</p><p>Laying back and watching as the ceiling seemed to move wasn’t fun, and going to the living room to lay on the couch to try and watch TV wasn’t worth it. She couldn’t focus enough to pay attention to any of it and it wasn’t like there was anything worth watching anyway.</p><p>Alone and miserable, she had to wonder if the reason she had gotten sick was when Tiffany had pushed her into the mud and she’d picked up some weird germ from whatever was in the drainage ditch. She felt a spike of anger thinking about that, more so than usual, her vision blurring for a moment at the thought of what she’d do if that were to happen again, but the anger faded fast, replaced by concern. If she’d gotten sick from that maybe the reason she couldn’t find Binchi was because he’d been a hallucination. He’d certainly been weird enough for it.</p><p>She made up her mind, when her mom got home she’d tell her everything, about Tiffany and her friends, getting pushed into the drainage ditch, all of it.</p><p>Except she knew it was a bad idea, there was nothing her mom could do, if she tried to get an adult involved it would only make things worse for her, no one would believe her side of things and Tiffany and the others would only be even meaner to her in retaliation. If she was going to solve things she would have to take matters into her own hands.</p><p>Hallucination or not, Binchi was right, she was going to have to stand up to her tormenters and make them never want to bother her again.</p><p>That thought was so unlike her that thinking it came as a surprise, except the more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea once she was feeling better she’d…</p><p>She honestly didn’t know what she’d do and in the state she was in she could hardly focus enough to figure it out. All she knew was that the idea of standing up to Tiffany and putting her in her place was comforting.</p><p>Laying on the couch, or in her bed, wandering the house, she half thought, half dreamed up various revenge plans. Pushing Amber down into the mud and then holding her there was appealing, but so was just punching Emma in the face and laughing at her. Would Emma know how to respond to that? Her nose was so small, so fragile, hardly any bone supporting it, it would break so easily…</p><p>It was such a strange thought to have, out of nowhere and uncharacteristically violent, but it was one that kept playing in her head over and over again.</p><p>Tiffany, she’d save Tiffany for last, make sure she understood what was in store for her, make her regret everything that she’d said and done.</p><p>She dozed off imagining various revenge scenarios very different from her usual fantasies about saying something so devastatingly witty to one of her tormentors, in front of the whole classroom, that they were humiliated and too embarrassed to ever mess with her again.</p><p>Kimberly woke up with a start at hearing someone in the room with her. An instant later that shock was followed by another one as she rolled off the sofa and hit the floor.</p><p>She’d been asleep on the couch, even though she was sure that she’d made it back to her room, unless she’d been sleep walking.</p><p>Had she been sleep walking?</p><p>“Sorry,” whoever was in the room with her repeated.</p><p>She looked around, trying to see where they were, only to realize that she didn’t recognize the voice.</p><p>More than that, she wasn’t even sure if she’d even heard them in the first place. It was more of the impression that someone had apologized.</p><p>And then the sense of them repeating and elaborating.</p><p>Thoughts were coming to her, ones that weren’t her own.</p><p>It was Binchi, somehow. He’d said he wasn’t psychic, couldn’t get into her head, yet here he was, talking to her in her mind, putting thoughts in there.</p><p>He gave a very detailed impression of being sorry, that things were more difficult than he’d expected, but that came with a sense of reassurance, that the worst was over and from here on out things would be easier, but not just easier. They’d be better.</p><p>“Where are you?” she interrupted, “How are you doing this?”</p><p>From where she lay she peered under the sofa, wondering if he was hiding there.</p><p>He wasn’t, though the thought and questions amused him, she could feel it and had to struggle to keep from smiling herself.</p><p>“What’s going on?”</p><p>Before she even finished speaking Binchi gave an explanation.</p><p>Integrating with her nervous system had proven a slower process than he’d anticipated, the differences between their species great enough that it had taken far more effort and there had been a minor immune reaction, further complicating matters.</p><p>The mental images that had accompanied that had not been comforting, in fact they’d been something right out of a horror movie, the kind that she’d always hated ever since catching part of one on late night TV back when she was little and shouldn’t have seen something like that to begin with.</p><p>It was from Binchi’s point of view, and in his opinion what had happened had been normal and more or less expected, which only made things worse, that there was a corner of her mind where what had happened felt normal and not at all alarming.</p><p>That corner of her mind belonged to Binchi though, not her.</p><p>He’d gone from being an alien-slug-snake-thing to an alien brain parasite.</p><p>His amusement made her smile despite her fear.</p><p>He wasn’t a <em>parasite</em>, and he certainly wasn’t in her brain. They’d formed a symbiotic bond, and he’d integrated himself into…</p><p>Okay, his understanding of anatomy didn’t line up with hers and she wasn’t sure if it was that her knowledge was lacking or that his was based on alien biology, because she was pretty sure the organs that he was suggesting that he was nestled in the empty space between didn’t exist in humans, but she didn’t doubt he was there.</p><p>Especially when she felt him move.</p><p>“Okay, you’re like inside me?” A pretty dumb question after what she’d felt, but he confirmed it.</p><p>Feeling his thoughts form in her brain, explaining things to her was disconcerting, but somehow his reassurances that everything would be fine worked, especially when he pointed out that her fever had broken.</p><p>Binchi spent the rest of the afternoon trying to explain things to her as best as he was able, though he admitted that there was a lot that was unknown to him as well, given that she was a human and not a female of his species. At most she was left with a rough idea of what to expect, that there would be slight physical changes, nothing too alarming, though she could tell that he was being evasive about that.</p><p>Or that what he considered to not be alarming was something that she wouldn’t agree with. The ideas were there, but slipping away from her when she tried to focus on them.</p><p>It was creepy that he’d somehow fused with her, or something, but by the time her mom got home she was willing to accept the situation. After all, Binchi had implied that there wasn’t anything that could be done about it, at least not on Earth. There were procedures, he’d told her, on his world for separating a paired male and female, the implication being that if they ever wanted to go their separate ways that they’d need to get in touch with his home.</p><p>Binchi had put her in a difficult situation to be sure, leaving her with no choice but to help him.</p><p>“Some friend you are,” she’d commented, not able to manage his trick of just thinking things and having him understand. He thought that with time she’d pick it up though, their situation not being uncommon between newly paired individuals. Binchi spoke, laughingly, about a classmate of his who took a whole year to figure out how to communicate wordlessly with their partner. It wasn’t reassuring at all, but she’d laughed anyway, unable to help herself due to Binchi’s amusement.</p><p>He could feel her worry and frustration though, and was at least willing to admit that he might have misunderstood the concept of friendship, but he was confident that things would work out fine for them in the end.</p><p>She doubted it, especially when Binchi offered to assist her in school, as though that would make any difference. They talked back and forth until her mom got home and started making dinner.</p><p>After that the conversation became one-sided as she was unable to respond to Binchi’s thoughts in her mind.</p><p>He was adamant that she go to school the next day, going so far as to suggest stuff that she should study in her spare time. She had little to no interest in building her own computer, but Binchi was very persuasive that it would be helpful to him, and the thought that finding a way to contact his home world would get him gone sooner made it sound like a really good idea. He’d laughed at her distain for the idea that by that time she might not want to get rid of him, but she’d been unable to say anything, as the topic came up in the middle of dinner and she was struggling to carry on a conversation with her mom, mostly about how her mom was willing to cancel her plans with Kevin for tomorrow if Kimberly didn’t want to be home alone.</p><p>That was enough to make her say that she was ready to get back to school, because as little as she liked her mom’s boyfriend, she didn’t want to get between them, especially since it meant that her mom would want to talk to her.</p><p>About Kevin.</p><p>After dinner she did her homework so that she wouldn’t have to talk any more with her mom.</p><p>Binchi of course was there, somehow picking up on her thoughts when she didn’t want him to, expressing interest in her math homework and amusement at her history and science assignments. At least he managed to be helpful there, catching a few mistakes in her math work as she was in the process of making them and helping her finish it much more easily than she normally did.</p><p>Help with math homework was one point in his favor, but that didn’t count for much at all.</p><p>The rest of the night was pretty normal, Binchi encouraging her to continue with her normal routine to help, in his words ‘facilitate the adjustment process’.</p><p>The next morning she got up feeling fine despite the weird dreams she’d had, bits of Binchi’s thoughts creeping into her own. The really weird part of them was that they’d felt perfectly normal when she’d been having them.</p><p>Binchi wanting to ask questions about the bits of her dreams that he’d picked up on was the really, really weird part, but there was no way that she was going to explain what had happened in the one dream that she could remember, one where she ended up trapped in the school at night with Mike, the cute guy who say three rows down from her in Spanish class and probably didn’t even know who she was. That certain elements of the dream had been fun for her hadn’t been lost on Binchi, but he stopped asking about it after she told him to let the subject drop.</p><p>Mostly at least, because he had to make the last comment that if she had really wanted to impress Mike she should have made one of the girls who sat closer to him give up her seat so she could take it.</p><p>Binchi was dense in some ways and she did her best to ignore him on the walk to school.</p><p>Ignoring him at school proved harder and less desirable. He could, to some degree, pick up on what she saw, and was quick to give advice on where to look to see if anyone was sneaking up on her. Thanks to him she was able to catch Amber making a beeline towards her and hurry to homeroom to avoid any trouble, much to Binchi’s disappointment.</p><p>In Binchi’s mind fighting Amber when she was alone would have been ideal and he couldn’t get it that she didn’t want to fight.</p><p>At least not at first.</p><p>Later in the day, when Emma managed to accidentally knock her books off her desk when walking by, stepping on her math homework when the papers fell on the floor, Kimberly had to admit that it was a struggle not to grab Emma before she was out of reach.</p><p>All day Binchi made suggestions like that, noticing who was watching her and assuming the worst of them in the most cheerful way possible.</p><p>As far as Binchi was concerned, everyone was looking for a fight and she should have been more than happy to give them one. Kimberly got the distinct impression that he was genuinely disappointed by the fact that a shouting match in the cafeteria didn’t end up in a fight, though seeing two guys shoving each other in the hall between classes over something that only they seemed to care about was hilarious to him.</p><p>It was kind of stupid to see, but she didn’t get what was so funny, even when Binchi tried to explain why realizing that they were guys and that they were fighting was so absurd until he managed to get across to her, in vivid mental images, what he was thinking.</p><p>The idea of two guys of his species fighting was hilarious, little snakes making weird noises and bumping heads with each other as a crowd of females looked on. The females of his species though, at least as he recalled them, they were something else.</p><p>Until that moment she hadn’t been able to imagine what girls looked like on Binchi’s planet and she was glad for it. Even with his reassurances that the females he was imagining were all very attractive, far more attractive than any human, they were still terrifying. Trying to imagine a pair of them fighting, even though it was something that Binchi did for her benefit, was not fun, at least not for her. He definitely enjoyed the idea and thought her response was hilarious.</p><p>She wouldn’t stand a chance against a female of his species, he said proudly, but by the time the pairing process was completed she would probably be more than a match for any of the girls in her school. He was persistent, never letting go of the idea that she should fight Tiffany and the others and as the week wore on she found herself more inclined to agree with him.</p><p>It wasn’t just that she’d put on muscle, not just weight, but visible muscle, and had to finally throw out a pair of older shoes that had finally gotten to small, as well as get rid of a few pairs of old jeans because they didn’t fit her quite right any more.</p><p>There were other changes as well, ones that she was sure she should have been alarmed by, but Binchi wasn’t. In fact, he was relieved when they happened and because of that so was she, even if she knew she should have been panicking. Those changes, things that hadn’t been there before that weren’t entirely under her control had only been a surprise to her and Binchi’s reassurances worked. They shouldn’t have, not with how weird it all was, but they did. Especially since one night Binchi had demonstrated what he could do as a result of those changes.</p><p>That had helped, a lot, and she decided that she was fine with him practicing control over something that could easily be hidden.</p><p>As long as she was careful about what she wore no one would ever notice. After all, she wasn’t the only girl to wear baggy, ugly, oversized t-shirts in gym class, something which Emma would single her out for doing, even if she was one of many.</p><p>Binchi suggesting how she should retaliate, the best angle of attack, was constant and it wasn’t so much that he was slowly wearing her down as it was her realizing that he had a point.</p><p>If she did things right, waited for a time when it was just her, Tiffany, Emma and Amber, then no one would believe what happened. Binchi was right that their pride would prevent them from saying anything, but there was more to it than that.</p><p>Until she’d met Binchi she never would have believed that aliens were real, but she knew that if she had tried to claim that they were everyone would have thought that she was crazy.</p><p>She just had to wait for the right moment, which was fine by Binchi. He agreed that things would be better if she waited until the pairing process was finished.</p><p>Unfortunately, Tiffany took matters out of her hands.</p><p>Maybe she was frustrated by Kimberly’s sudden lack of response to her tormenting, maybe it was because Kimberly had refused to get out of Amber’s way in the hall, maybe it was because Emma had broken up with her boyfriend and Tiffany thought it would help cheer her up. Whatever the reason, Kimberly got wind that Tiffany planned on following her home again.</p><p>Probably to try and shove her down into the same drainage ditch as before, because Tiffany honestly wasn’t that creative, just mean.</p><p>It went without saying that Binchi was thrilled with the whole situation. It was a perfect opportunity, better than anything he could have planned himself. All the two of them needed to do was wait for the day to end, which honestly wasn’t that hard.</p><p>Binchi, weird as he could be, was great for conversation and with his help most of her classes were easier, not always because he got the subject matter, but because having someone else listening during class and then helping her with her assignments made classes actually kind of fun. His running commentary during science class was hilarious and he actually enjoyed math which mostly made up for some of the weird things that had started happening because of him.</p><p>When the last bell finally rang Kimberly left most of her books in her locker and headed for the door. Even if Binchi was confident that things would go well for them she wasn’t leaving anything to chance and the last thing she needed was to lose her notebooks and text books all over again.</p><p>A part of her hoped that if she left fast enough and hurried home she’d be too fast for Tiffany, Amber and Emma to catch her. There was nothing wrong with making it home safely, with no conflict. Another, much larger, part of her wanted to settle things with her tormenters once and for all and Binchi was in agreement with that part, which meant she was outvoted.</p><p>Trying not to get pushed along by the crowd of her classmates hurrying out of the building she lingered by the door long enough to see Tiffany working her way through the crowd towards her.</p><p>By pure chance their eyes met and Tiffany glared at her with a look of such intense disdain that Kimberly was surprised. Why on earth did Tiffany dislike her so much when she’d done nothing?</p><p>Not even Binchi had an answer for that, and turning her back to Tiffany, Kimberly hurried out the door. The last thing she needed was to get caught before reaching the place that Binchi had decided would be best for the confrontation.</p><p>Once she was off school grounds she forced herself to slow down. She’d gotten a head start and if she put too much distance between herself and Tiffany Binchi’s plan wouldn’t work. All she had to do was keep walking and trust that Binchi was right with his plan.</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Revenge!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“The others have caught up,” Binchi said, his words clear in her head, were accompanied by the suggestion of how close Tiffany and her friends were.</p><p>Kimberly glanced behind her. Her trio of tormentors were a hundred or so feet behind her, closer than Binchi had suggested and closing in fast.</p><p>“If you move faster they may give chase.”</p><p>Binchi’s comment was unnecessary. They were still a ways from the turn she wanted to take and if Tiffany caught up with her here her plan wouldn’t work. She’d been through this before, when she didn’t have him watching her back and her attempt at escaping that time had only made things worse.</p><p>The last time she’d taken this route home she’d tried to run and lose them, only to trip and have Tiffany and the others catch up with her, out of breath and angry for her making them work for their fun. That had been the first time their tormenting had gotten physical with Emma kicking her when she was on the ground, and the three of them had discovered they liked it.</p><p>Kimberly broke into a run, she could feel Binchi laughing.</p><p>Behind her she could hear Amber laughing, because she didn’t know what was in store for her, which was hilarious.</p><p>Of course Amber was the first one to give chase, quickly pulling ahead of the others, she was on the cross country team after all, which was a large part of the reason why running from them was useless.</p><p>Kimberly made it the end of the street and turned, right instead of the left that was her usual route home. She’d been down it before, last year when Tiffany and the others started following her home to continue tormenting her away from the teachers and anyone who might help. That had been before they realized that if they were careful enough they’d never get in trouble.</p><p>“She is gaining on us,” Binchi said, listening to Amber’s footsteps behind them so that Kimberly could focus on running.</p><p>Kimberly nodded. Binchi might have been able to talk to her mentally, but she still had to talk out loud for him to understand anything beyond emotion and the most basic ideas from her.</p><p>Right now he could tell she was nervous, because if this went wrong it would be an absolute disaster.</p><p>Amber was closing in on them, but she hadn’t caught them yet, which was a surprise, because she was actually putting in effort. Kimberly had believed Binchi that she was stronger than she’d been and that the muscle she’d put on wasn’t just for show, but actually experiencing proof of it made her more confident about Binchi’s plan.</p><p>“You’re in trouble for what you did!” Amber yelled at her, which made no sense. She hadn’t done anything.</p><p>Unless Amber meant how she’d only half finished her history homework in study hall before Amber stole it from her to hand in as her own. Like it she was the one to blame for Amber taking her school work.</p><p>Kimberly felt herself starting to slow down and was worried that she’d already tired herself out until Binchi spoke, “Here is good.”</p><p>She knew that he could see and hear things around her, somehow, but it was unnerving to think about what else he could do, like get her to stop running.</p><p>He was right though, the road they’d gone down was a weird, twisty little back road that didn’t have many houses on it and was surrounded by woods. A few steps off the road and she’d be out of sight.</p><p>Veering off the road she ran into the woods and moved on to the next step of their plan, trusting that Binchi knew what he was doing.</p><p>“I have a better idea!” Binchi said abruptly, bringing her attention to a large pine tree.</p><p>Not the most reassuring thing for him to say when she could hear Amber reach the edge of the woods and stop, especially when she was having a hard time parsing what it was that Binchi thought she should do.</p><p>“Get her attention,” Binchi urged, “Before the others catch up.”</p><p>It wasn’t worth trying to make sense of things when he had an idea, something that she’d learned quickly. His thoughts would sneak into her head, distracting her and making it hard for her to tell which of them was thinking what.</p><p>“Your new haircut is ugly!” Kimberly called out. Not the cleverest thing to say, but Amber had been talking about her new highlights for the past few days so it was the first thing that came to mind.</p><p>“At least I don’t let my mom cut my hair,” Amber retorted, bringing up something that had been a source of embarrassment for Kimberly for years. She’d let her mom cut her hair once, just once and it hadn’t even been that bad a haircut, it was saying that her mom had done it that had been a mistake.</p><p>Insults aside, what mattered was that Amber took the bait and, instead of waiting for Tiffany and Emma to catch up with her, she started into the woods.</p><p>Keeping an eye on Amber, Kimberly let Binchi take things into his own hands, quite literally in as much as he had hands, and followed his suggestion to back away towards the tree.</p><p>“Are you too poor to get a real haircut?” Amber continued, stepping carefully over several tree roots, “Because that would explain how you dress.”</p><p>Okay, that was just plain stupid, because Kimberly knew, for a fact, that she had a better sense of style than Emma, who had the tendency to wear weird colored socks at least once a week. Sometimes they didn’t even match.</p><p>And thinking of that, “Should I start wearing different colored socks like Emma?”</p><p>She’d never tried insulting Amber or any of the others back when they made fun of her, which meant that she never expected things to go in the direction they did -  Amber went from being mean for the fun of it to being genuinely angry.</p><p>“This is why everyone hates you,” Amber snapped, “You’re a horrible person. We’d treat you nice if you were nicer.”</p><p>It was especially ironic since she’d tried being nice to them when they first started tormenting her, naïvely believing that it was some sort of misunderstanding. That thought went through clearly enough that she could feel Binchi laughing. Maybe, at least with Tiffany and her friends, Binchi’s understanding of things made more sense than anything she’d thought of.</p><p>“I tried that,” she reminded, continuing to back up, trusting Binchi to warn her when she was getting close to the tree, “You were still awful, which is why I’m trying this.”</p><p>Whatever this even was. Binchi was being very guarded about his plan, other than the most immediate steps of it. She didn’t dare take her eyes off Amber to see if she was near the tree because, though she could no longer see the road thanks to the dense brush near it, she could hear that Tiffany and Emma had arrived and were loudly debating whether or not they should go into the woods. Tiffany wanted to, but from the sounds of things Emma had her doubts.</p><p>Another cautious step back and she nearly tripped when she bumped into the tree.</p><p>Of course. Despite everything else it wasn’t like she had eyes on the back of her head so Binchi could only see what she was looking at, even if he tended to notice things that she didn’t.</p><p>She could feel Binchi’s excited question when he picked up the thought, did she expect more eyes?</p><p>“It’s just an expression,” she whispered as Binchi took over and guided her to step around, behind the tree, “And are we hiding? Because that’s not a good plan.”</p><p>“Are you trying to hide?” Amber giggled, echoing her thoughts, which proved how dumb it was.</p><p>“We are waiting,” Binchi said calmly.</p><p>He didn’t elaborate on what they were waiting for, just suggested that she stand differently, crouch down in what Kimberly figured was a runners stance.</p><p>If they ended up running away again after all this…</p><p>Binchi dismissed that thought, forcing it right out of her head. They weren’t going to run, not when Amber was so close.</p><p>“You’re only going to make this worse for yourself, you know,” Amber laughed, “Imagine having to walk all the way home without your pants. Because if you’re going to make fun of how people dress…”</p><p>Amber stepped around the tree and Binchi reacted so fast that Kimberly didn’t realize what was happening until she tackled Amber.</p><p>She landed on top of Amber, straddling her, a moment of confusion on Binchi’s part following. Kimberly didn’t have claws, her jaw muscles were pathetic, so he had no idea how to follow up on the attack. She was on her own, for the time being at least, but there was adrenaline and aggression to help with that.</p><p>Amber’s idea for humiliating her by making her walk home naked had been a good one, Kimberly was willing to give her that much as she grabbed Amber’s shirt and tried to pull it over her head.</p><p>Amber wasn’t going to make it easy though and she struggled the whole time, lashing out blindly, thrashing beneath her until the shirt was tangled around her arms, which served to restrain her.</p><p>“You’re disgusting!” Amber screamed, “What kind of sicko would even think of –”</p><p>“You, last week,” Kimberly snarled, “And the week before that, and the time you attacked me with scissors to cut off my bra!”</p><p>Speaking of bras, Amber’s had ridden up slightly during the struggle. Kimberly grabbed it with the intent of pulling it off because that was Amber’s favorite way of tormenting her and the idea of turning the tables on her was pretty hilarious.</p><p>Binchi though, he had other ideas.</p><p>“Yes!” He laughed, “Attack sensitive areas!”</p><p>Binchi really, really didn’t understand underwear because they lined up with what Kimberly had realized from sharing thoughts with him, were the most heavily armored areas for girls of his species. His impression was that they were armor to protect vulnerable places, which wasn’t exactly wrong. Going through the day without a bra was uncomfortable and embarrassing, but nothing more than that.</p><p>When Kimberly was too slow to react for Binchi’s liking he took over. She was able to fight off his suggestion to grab Amber’s breasts and squeeze, though she realized that the idea had a certain appeal. Some of that was Binchi, she knew that, because after what he’d done her thoughts had gotten weird, not bad, just weird.</p><p>Unfortunately, while she was mostly in control of her own body, Binchi being able to do little more than suggest things unless she let him, most of the additions were more firmly under his control.</p><p>Two sets of long, slender tentacles uncurled from her sides where Binchi had kept them hidden away since they’d grown in.</p><p>There was a moment of struggle as he worked to get them out from under her shirt, three lifting it from underneath and one managing to work its way up past her collar.</p><p>Tangled as she was in her shirt with it covering her eyes like an improvised blindfold, Amber had no idea what was going on, though for that matter neither did Kimberly until Binchi took action.</p><p>Arcing the upper most tentacle back Binchi cracked it like a whip, striking Amber across the chest.</p><p>The other three curled around her, grabbing and squeezing.</p><p>Kimberly could sort of feel things though them, but in the weird way, like how if her arm fell asleep from laying on it wrong she could still mostly feel it, just not do anything until circulation returned.</p><p>In the same way, she was aware of the feeling of holding Amber’s breasts, more of pressure and texture than anything else. Her skin was so smooth, the weight of her breasts familiar from Binchi’s nighttime experiments on her with his tentacles, but completely alien, because these weren’t her breasts.</p><p>Kimberly laughed, more nervously than anything else, as Binchi struck Amber again. She couldn’t stop him, and watching the way Amber arched her back and screamed, she wasn’t sure if she even wanted to try.</p><p>“What are you fucking doing?” Amber tried to shout, her words muffled slightly by the shirt covering her face, “I’ll –”</p><p>What was likely a threat cut off abruptly when Binchi constricted his tentacles, hard.</p><p>Amber bucked and squirmed beneath her.</p><p>This hadn’t been what she wanted when she’d agreed to Binchi’s plans for revenge, except he hadn’t exactly been subtle with some of his suggestions, putting ideas into her mind. Those ideas had been fun when they were messing around at night, but to actually be acting them out…</p><p>A scream from behind her made her turn around.</p><p>Tiffany and Emma had arrived and were staring at her with uncomprehending horror.</p><p>“She’s killing her!” Emma screamed, grabbing at Tiffany, trying to shove her towards Kimberly and Amber.</p><p>Beneath her Amber continued to struggle, until she managed to pull her arm free and more by luck than anything else, slap Kimberly across the face.</p><p>It was more of a surprise than anything actually painful, but it made Kimberly lean back enough for Amber to shove her off and take off running.</p><p>Kimberly fell backwards and found herself sprawled on the ground in front of Tiffany and Emma.</p><p>Binchi’s fear that the two of them would retaliate, proved correct when Emma aimed a halfhearted kick at her. It barely connected, and when Emma lifted her foot, maybe to try stepping on her, Kimberly reacted.</p><p>She couldn’t control the tentacles, not yet, though Binchi had told her that in time their control over her body, new additions included, would be more evenly shared, but she was able to start them moving and Binchi was able to follow through on her idea, wrapping around Emma’s leg and pulling sharply.</p><p>The tentacles weren’t very strong, not without something to brace against, but it was enough to pull Emma off balance so that she grabbed onto Tiffany, who in turn shoved her back.</p><p>“Get off me,” she snapped, then glared down at Kimberly, “You really shouldn’t have started a fight with us.”</p><p>“A snake bit me!” Emma interrupted, again grabbing onto Tiffany, “There are snakes are everywhere!”</p><p>If not for her predicament Kimberly would have rolled her eyes. Binchi’s tentacles looked nothing like a snake, and for Emma to think that she’d been bitten? Those tentacles were barely even textured, aside for near the tips where the scales covering them were larger, and those little bumps were only there to help grip things.</p><p>Well, they were good for other things too, but that didn’t matter right now, probably…</p><p>Because somehow Binchi had picked up on that thought, fleeting as it’d been and he liked it.</p><p>“There are no snakes!” Tiffany shoved her away again, “You and your stupid imaginary snakes are why she beat up Amber.”</p><p>Oh, that was hilarious, that the reason they’d waited so long before coming after her was because Emma had been afraid.</p><p>“Look, right there,” Emma pointed at Binchi’s tentacles, which were curling back and forth, trying to grab her feet again.</p><p>“You’re being stupid,” Tiffany said, not even bothering to look where Emma was pointing, which proved to be a mistake, one of many.</p><p>The two of them arguing gave Kimberly the time to get up.</p><p>Binchi lashed out at Emma with his tentacles, laughing when she screamed and fell backwards.</p><p>Tiffany finally noticed the tentacles, though it would have been hard not to when one of them had managed to wrap around her leg.</p><p>“<em>Holyshitasnake</em>!” Tiffany screamed and pushed past Emma, running for her life.</p><p>“Don’t leave me!” Emma pleaded, turning her back to Kimberly and trying to follow, but it was too late.</p><p>Kimberly grabbed her from behind, surprised at how feeble Emma’s struggles felt. They were about the same size, or they had been. Now Kimberly realized that she was maybe an inch taller than Emma, but more importantly, she was much, much stronger.</p><p>It was just an accident that when she wrapped her arms around Emma’s chest to hold her in place that she grabbed her breasts, but what Binchi did wasn’t an accident, not at all.</p><p>Continuing with his logic of attacking <em>sensitive</em> areas Binchi’s tentacles squirmed, searching until they found their way under Emma’s clothing. This time all four of them went straight beneath the waist of her jeans, coiling around her legs pressing between them as Kimberly held her in place.</p><p>“Don’t let me die!” Emma sobbed, “If they bite me I’ll die. I’m allergic to snakes!”</p><p>Kimberly admittedly didn’t know much about snakes, having mistaken Binchi for one, but she was pretty sure that wasn’t how it worked. People weren’t allergic to snakes, they just bit you and you died, but if Emma knew even less…</p><p>“Stay still and they won’t bite you.”</p><p>Emma continued to thrash.</p><p>Binchi tightened his grip on her, moving his tentacles back and forth against between her legs. His scales were small and fine enough that they felt perfectly smooth from one direction and moving back, against them, they only felt slightly rough.</p><p>Of course, given where Binchi had them pressed Emma was bound to feel it.</p><p>“I don’t want to die,” Emma sobbed, “Please!”</p><p>“Keep struggling and they’ll bite,” Kimberly warned as she leaned back, lifting Emma’s feet off the ground.</p><p>She couldn’t feel exactly what Binchi’s tentacles were doing, but she had a rough idea of it. It was something he’d done with her before.</p><p>“If don’t move at all they might let go and leave you alone,” Kimberly whispered in her ear, “Especially if you’re quiet and don’t make a sound.”</p><p>Binchi snickered, “I can make her make a noise.”</p><p>The tip of one of his tentacles worked its way into place between her legs, pressing upwards.</p><p>“I’m going to let you down,” Kimberly said, surprised with how much she was enjoying this. Some of it was Binchi, maybe most of it was Binchi. He was an alien and a guy, so he could be pretty weird, but she was still having fun, especially seeing how pale Emma was and feeling how hard she was shaking, “Remember, if you don’t move you’ll be fine.”</p><p>Emma made a small noise that Kimberly chose to interpret as agreement, and she carefully put Emma down and let go of her</p><p>For a moment it looked like Emma was going to fall, and she waved her arms wildly, struggling to balance.</p><p>Kimberly put a hand on her shoulder to steady her until, legs spread wide in an attempt to have as little contact with Binchi’s tentacles as possible, Emma managed to stand.</p><p>She stood as still as she could, shaking like a leaf as Binchi continued to work his tentacles back and forth, the tip of one pressing harder and harder against her pussy until it managed so slide in.</p><p>Emma did make a noise, a muffled soft of hiccup, which Binchi thought was especially funny.</p><p>“Quiet,” Kimberly reminded.</p><p>Emma sobbed, trembling even harder as Binchi worked the tip of the tentacle farther into her. Even Kimberly could feel her resistance, the way her muscles tensed against the unwelcome intrusion. Her legs were shaking so hard that it was a wonder that she could even stand.</p><p>“I wonder…” Binchi, trailed off, but his thoughts were so clear, so vivid that Kimberly shuddered, and not in fear. When they messed around at night after her mom had gone to sleep, working to improve their connection and dexterity, as Binchi put it, he typically used two tentacles on her, they’d tried a third once, but it had been too much, going from weird but fun to painful. With Emma there was no need to worry.</p><p>Emma’s muscles tensed, tighter and tighter, making getting even the tip of a second tentacle in a struggle.</p><p>“Just relax,” Kimberly snickered, feeling Emma’s struggling against Binchi, “If you’re lucky it’ll all be over soon.”</p><p>Emma had said something similar to her once, when she and the others had cornered Kimberly in the stairwell between classes, shoving her so that she was hanging half over the railing and then holding her there. Staring down at the ground, three floors below she’d been so afraid that she was going to fall. Emma at least was on solid ground and in no danger whatsoever, not that she knew it.</p><p>She could feel Binchi’s efforts, struggling to get that second tentacle in, marveling at how different it was when someone was unwilling, how much more exciting the challenge made it. Much to her surprise, she felt the same way, enjoying the way that Emma had struggled, and how easy it had been to overpower her.</p><p>Inch, by inch, the second tentacle slid in, the tip of a third tentacle lining up, ready and waiting for an opportunity. It came when Emma relaxed, ever so slightly.</p><p>It pressed against her pussy, which was just starting to get wet, the slightest touch.</p><p>Emma let out a sound half way between a moan and a sigh before falling forward in a dead faint.</p><p>Binchi uncoiled his tentacles just in time to keep them from being pulled forward, his disappointment obvious.</p><p>“There’s still Tiffany,” Kimberly reminded.</p><p>And Tiffany hadn’t made it far, having tripped over a large root that had been mostly hidden by moss and leaves.</p><p>She’d landed on her hands and knees and made no attempt to get up.</p><p>Seeing her that way gave Kimberly an idea.</p><p>“Get up!”</p><p>When Tiffany remained frozen, staring up at her, Kimberly bent down and pulled her up so that she was on her knees.</p><p>“What are you…” Tiffany trailed off, eyes going wide.</p><p>Where she was, eyelevel with Kimberly’s crotch she could see clearly as Binchi’s lower two sets of tentacles squirmed in anticipation. Small as they were, it wasn’t that difficult for him to fold them against her pussy to hide them away, but right now there was no point to it.</p><p>“You’ll see,” Kimberly chuckled, unzipping her fly.</p><p>Binchi’s lower tentacles did the rest of the work for her, pushing out of her panties and pulling them down to reveal her pussy. Other than the two sets of short, scaleless tentacles framing it, there wasn’t much that was different about her pussy from before Binchi, but Tiffany stared at it like it was something she’d never seen before.</p><p>“Eat me out.”</p><p>Tiffany continued to stare, flinching when the tentacles, slick with wetness from Kimberly’s pussy, reached out towards her.</p><p>Kimberly honestly wasn’t that surprised that she was wet, not with the way that Binchi had been wiggling those little tentacles of his against her. At first those tentacles felt huge to her, until the upper set of tentacles had continued to grow in, far longer and thicker. Still, they weren’t anywhere near as terrifying as Tiffany seemed to think they were.</p><p>“Come on,” Kimberly cajoled, Binchi using his lower tentacles to gently spread her pussy to make things easier for Tiffany.</p><p>When Tiffany continued to stare, open mouthed, Kimberly took matters into her own hands, grabbing Tiffany and pulling her forward.</p><p>When Tiffany still refused to cooperate, Binchi grabbed her with all both sets of upper tentacles and started grinding her nose against Kimberly’s pussy.</p><p>“Do it or I will strangle you.”</p><p>That was Binchi, pure Binchi, and her concern at the fact that he’d managed to make her speak quickly vanished as Tiffany realized that she was serious, and after gagging dramatically, began to lick at her pussy.</p><p>Her efforts were, if Kimberly was to be honest, pathetic, missing her clit entirely and most of the time going too far to one side or another to actually feel good.</p><p>Seeing Tiffany like that though, kneeling with tears in her eyes as she gasped and sobbed, flinching every time one of Binchi’s tentacles moved, that definitely felt good.</p><p>“What is this?” Binchi wondered, tracing one of his lower tentacles across Tiffany’s face, squirming back and forth against the tracks of her tears.</p><p>“She’s crying,” Kimberly answered, not caring that she was talking to him out loud in front of Tiffany. She got the feeling that Tiffany hardly heard, focused as she was on the tentacles around her neck and face.</p><p>“Does it help?” Binchi continued to play with the wetness streaking Tiffany’s face.</p><p>Kimberly laughed.</p><p>Fun as it was to look down and watch Tiffany, it wasn’t that satisfying and Kimberly knew she wouldn’t be getting off from it any time soon.</p><p>Fortunately, Binchi noticed as well and put his lower sets of tentacles to good use, much to Tiffany’s dismay at the way they slid back and forth against her face.</p><p>“You don’t like that, do you?” Kimberly taunted when Tiffany froze after one of the tentacles slapped her across the face to make her move so that it could rub against Kimberly’s clit.</p><p>Tiffany shook her head, stopped, nodded and then let out a sob, unable to tell if she was supposed to agree, disagree, or keep going.</p><p>“If you did a better job it I wouldn’t been forced to do this,” Kimberly taunted as Binchi reacted to her thoughts almost instantly, stopping what he was doing with his lower tentacles to rub them back and forth against Tiffany’s face, making her cry even harder.</p><p>Her look of horror and disgust was absolutely hilarious.</p><p>“It’ll stop if you can get me off,” Kimberly offered, because after all this playing around she’d decided that one way or another she wanted satisfaction.</p><p>To her credit, Tiffany tried, or at least Kimberly thought she was trying. Binchi’s lower sets of tentacles kept getting in her way, and Tiffany kept pulling back, gasping for breath and struggling way, way too much.</p><p>Binchi was putting in a fair effort with his tentacles, and with a bit more time he probably could have gotten her there, but that wasn’t what she’d decided she’d wanted.</p><p>Shoving Tiffany aside she zipped up her pants and went to look for Amber.</p><p>Behind her she could hear Tiffany’s desperate flight to the road.</p><p>“That way,” Binchi said, guiding her deeper into the woods, “Listen.”</p><p>Sure enough she could hear leaves rustling and branches snapping in the direction Binchi had told her.</p><p>As she got closer she could hear sobbing as well.</p><p>Kimberly wasn’t making any effort to be quiet so it was no surprise that Amber heard her.</p><p>“Hello?” she called out nervously, “Emma? Tiffany?”</p><p>That was funny, that Amber thought her friends were looking for her. Tiffany had run and for all Kimberly knew Emma was still out cold, but of course Amber didn’t know that.</p><p>This was going to be fun.</p><p>Slowly, making an effort to be as quiet as possible, Kimberly began to make her way towards Amber.</p><p>“Is there someone there?” Amber whimpered, “I’m lost.”</p><p>There were enough trees that it was hard to see Amber at first, but once Kimberly caught sight of movement she knew exactly where to go, even if she couldn’t see Amber clearly yet.</p><p>Careful not to make any noise, trying to always keep something between her and Amber, she approached, curious how close she could get before Amber noticed.</p><p>“Tiffany!” Amber called out, louder than before, “Help me, please!”</p><p>Kimberly couldn’t believe how frightened Amber sounded, but, as with the others there was something comical about it, seeing the tables turned and her former tormenter vulnerable and afraid.</p><p>Amber had found her way to a small clearing, giving Kimberly a good look at her, frightened and jumping at every sound, turning every time she thought she heard something.</p><p>“This isn’t funny!” Amber stammered, trying to work herself up to being angry rather than terrified.</p><p>“Yes it is,” Kimberly snickered stepping out from behind the tree she’d been watching from behind.</p><p>Amber took one look at her and took off running.</p><p>Binchi urged her to give chase, though it was largely unnecessary. There was no way she was going to let Amber get away, not when she wanted to finish what she’d started.</p><p>Despite the thick brush Amber was surprisingly fast and it took actually effort for Kimberly to catch up with her. Probably because the cross country team practiced on trails through the woods near the school, so Amber had experience with this kind of thing while it was all new to Kimberly.</p><p>In the end, it didn’t matter, Amber was winded and staggering well before Kimberly felt even slightly out of breath, which was amazing. She’d never been particularly active before, having no interest in sports, but now she was curious to see what she could do. Chasing Amber was a fun start, but what else was she capable of? She’d lifted Emma with little trouble, which proved she was stronger, but by how much.</p><p>And how much faster was she?</p><p>Actually catching Amber proved to be far more of a challenge than just catching up with her, with Amber dodging and changing direction several times before Kimberly was able to grab her by the shirt, further ripping it in the process.</p><p>Both sets of upper tentacles wrapped around her, forcing her to turn around so she was face to face with Kimberly.</p><p>To her credit, Amber struggled, something that Binchi was willing to respect, especially when she tried to slap Kimberly.</p><p>Kimberly caught Amber’s hand in hers and briefly wondered about trying to break her fingers before dismissing the idea. She didn’t want to hurt Amber that bad, besides, she wasn’t even sure of how to do that.</p><p>Instead she forced Amber down to the ground, intending to make her beg for mercy and apologize for every mean thing that she’d ever done, maybe hurt her a little before heading home and letting Binchi take care of getting her off.</p><p>“Please, don’t hurt me,” Amber sobbed, struggling against the tentacles binding her, “I’ll do anything!”</p><p>“Anything?” Kimberly smiled down at her. After the chase she’d been considering just roughing Amber up a bit, really frightening her before letting her go, but seeing her on her knees begging like that…</p><p>She could feel her and Binchi’s lower set of tentacles beginning to spread. He was up for another round and so was she. Maybe she’d have better luck this time, and if not she could always stick with her original plan.</p><p>The tentacles that had wrapped around Amber, weaving in and out of her torn shirt, pulled her closer, wrapping loosely around her neck, curling under her chin to tilt her head at the right angle leaving Kimberly’s hands free to unzip her jeans and pull down her panties.</p><p>She was, thanks to Tiffany’s efforts and the excitement of the chase, soaking wet.</p><p>Amber shook her head, realizing exactly what <em>anything</em> entailed.</p><p>In response the tentacles around her jerked her forward so that her face was pressed against Kimberly’s pussy.</p><p>“Tire me out so I won’t chase you down to make you do it again.”</p><p>That was Binchi speaking.</p><p>Mostly.</p><p>Amber let out a little squeal of terror as Binchi’s lower sets of tentacles, slick from the juices clinging to Kimberly’s thighs, helped secure her in place. One of them, more by accident than design managed to work its way into her mouth, curling around her tongue.</p><p>“What are you waiting for?” Kimberly put her hands on Amber’s head, fingers gripping her hair.</p><p>Whimpering, Amber stuck out her tongue and began to lick.</p><p>“Harder,” Kimberly snapped, grinding Amber’s face against her pussy.</p><p>To her surprise, Amber nodded and did as told, whimpering and sobbing the whole time.</p><p>Binchi’s amusement tickled at the back of her brain as he wound their upper pairs of tentacles more tightly around Amber.</p><p>Three winding around her breasts, where the fact that her nipples were firm wasn’t lost on Binchi.</p><p>The fourth tentacle squirmed lower, forcing its way between Amber’s legs, which, after the barest struggle, she parted for him.</p><p>She was absolutely soaking wet.</p><p>Kimberly looked down at her, saw the shame in former tormentor’s eyes and laughed.</p><p>Now the way Amber always tried to pull off her shirts or bra made sense.</p><p>When Binchi moved a tentacle down from Amber’s breasts to between her legs it slipped right in alongside the first, Amber going so far as to rock against him. The movement was slight, as though she hoped that Kimberly wouldn’t notice, but she did.</p><p>“Not yet,” Kimberly reprimanded when Amber shuddered and tried to pull back, “I’m not done.”</p><p>And she wouldn’t be for a while. This was so much better than Tiffany and she wanted to savor it.</p><p>Amber was good though, even managing to overcome her initial fear and give the set of tentacles framing Kimberly’s pussy some attention as well. It did take some coaxing of course, but it was only fair that Binchi got in on the fun too.</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Epilogue</h2></a>
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    <p>“Yesterday was fun,” Binchi said happily as Kimberly walked to her locker the next day. They’d both been tired when she finally got home, but now he was happily chatting away, having spent much of the morning going over his favorite parts of the previous day’s events, “Your social status will improve, I will help you complete this stage of your education and then we can make plans to broadcast a message and contact my world so that I can finish my own education. I am quite patient and this is far preferable to what my mother had planned.”</p><p>Kimberly wasn’t sure if her getting more popular was actually going to happen, even if Tiffany and the others left her alone, but at this point that really didn’t bother her too much.</p><p>“I hope you have an interest in computer engineering.”</p><p>She didn’t, but she supposed that she didn’t really have a choice. She’d never had plans for her future beyond moving out and getting away, Binchi though, he had plans, big ones and she was going to have to go along with them</p><p>“Sending a transmission to my home is simple enough,” Binchi continued, “But I would much rather do so from a position where I have further developed my theories about your species’ capabilities. That way when I return we are assured a position of influence.”</p><p>Well, she had planned on moving as far as she could and moving to another planet after college was about as far as anyone could hope to go.</p><p>Especially since she had no idea what Tiffany and her friends would say about yesterday. She was sure that rumors were already flying, but she hadn’t heard any of them, yet.</p><p>She was going have to hope that they’d been too frightened by everything to get their stories straight, or that they’d try and stick as closely to the truth as possible, something that Binchi had pointed out wouldn’t help them. He’d been the one to mention that it was unbelievable that one female would overpower three so easily and that if they mentioned his tentacles the story was likely to be dismissed outright because there was no rational way for them to explain <em>those</em>. Emma’s terrified ranting about snakes certainly wouldn’t help make the story more believable if that came up.</p><p>Kimberly hoped that he was right, yet at the same time she couldn’t bring herself to care if he was wrong, not after seeing Tiffany catch sight of her heading into the school and take off running in the opposite direction. She hadn’t seen Emma at all and Amber was nowhere to be seen as well. For all she knew the two of them were still wandering around, lost in the woods.</p><p>She didn’t care where they all were, just that they were leaving her alone. Walking to her locker without needing to worry about them sneaking up behind her to take her homework, make fun of her or embarrass her in front of whoever was around was a relief.</p><p>Smiling to herself, Kimberly opened her locker.</p><p>A tightly folded piece of paper fell to the floor and her heart sank.</p><p>It wouldn’t be the first time that one of those bullies had left some insult or threat for her and it figured that her victory yesterday would be irrelevant today.</p><p>Fearing the worst she carefully unfolded the paper.</p><p>She recognized the handwriting immediately as Amber’s which wasn’t a surprise. Petty little nasty notes were something she enjoyed, once going so far as to absolutely fill her locker with them so that when she opened it she was hit by an avalanche of insults.</p><p>
  <em>You’re ugly.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You’re weird.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You’re stupid.</em>
</p><p>Never signed, of course, but unmistakably her because she’d brag about it later.</p><p>This note wasn’t like that though.</p><p>
  <em>Please don’t tell anyone what happened yesterday. I’ll die of embarrassment if Tiffany and Emma find out what I did. Emma really is weird and says stupid things and she does wear ugly socks and Tiffany is always ignoring me. They’re not very good friends and I don’t want to hang out with them this weekend. Instead I was thinking that maybe we could go to the mall together, or hang out or something. I’ll be your friend if you don’t tell anyone what I did.</em>
</p><p>“I told you that your social standing would improve,” Binchi said smugly, urging Kimberly to read it over again, especially the last line.</p><p>
  <em>…if you don’t tell anyone what I did.</em>
</p><p>The way Amber had put it was interesting, like she was more embarrassed about what she’d done rather than being upset that she’d been made to do it. Kimberly thought back to how wet she’d been, the way she’d moaned as Binchi had slid first one, then another tentacle inside her. She’d barely fought at all, in sharp contrast to Emma’s desperate struggles and by the end she’d been putting genuine effort into eating her out, much better than the sloppy, desperate job Tiffany had done.</p><p>It had to be Binchi’s fault that her mind was wandering to what she could get Amber to do in return for not saying anything. It had to be, because her thoughts had never been that violent before Binchi and she’d certainly never thought about girls like that, but now that she had…</p><p>One way or another, Kimberly was confident this year school was going to be a lot more enjoyable for her.</p>
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